


A Rare Rain

by GulJeri



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Childhood, Chronic Illness, Gay, Gen, Gender Issues, Gender disphoria, M/M, Mental Illness, Nonbinary Character, Trauma, queer
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-12
Updated: 2017-01-23
Packaged: 2018-09-08 00:28:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 31,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8822437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GulJeri/pseuds/GulJeri
Summary: Cardassia is nothing if not ruled by strict order and when one finds that they don't fit so well within that rigid structure, it is difficult to puzzle out where to fit in at all. Kelas worries that he will always be an outsider. Slowly he must learn to abandon the expectations set up by his family and society, and live his life on his own terms, as his own person, if he is to find peace within himself.(This is a story about Kelas Parmak, a backstory to 'my version' of the character, you could say. It begins in early childhood and will follow him probably until he meets Garak again post-war. Though the pacing of the story does not really 'drag'--it should not be too many chapters.)WARNING this story will deal with mature themes including: queer issues, gender issues, non-binary, gender roles, chronic illness, mental illness, mature sexual themes, and trauma. I will try to tag all the appropriate trigger warnings with each chapter. CHECK BEGINNING OF CHAPTERS FOR TRIGGER WARNINGS.





	1. The Desert

**Author's Note:**

> Tw: chronic illness, brief mention of food aversion, mental illness, trauma, hazing/assault, sexual issues, gender issues, gender dysphoria. I tried to tag anything I could think of as possible tw's I am sorry if I missed anything.

It was a rare rain tapping gentle drops onto the sand, onto the roof, onto Kela's Parmak's upturned face and into his hair. It was cool and he closed his eyes and sipped the air. He felt the way the rain must feel as it drained from the sky—misplaced. After all a desert wasn't meant to be wet.

  
Kelas was small for his age, and he was sick all the time. Often he had pushed back in his mind and probed the outer limits of it but he could never seem to find a point in time when he was not sick. Sometimes he had the thought that his body wasn't meant to exist and that he was only alive by some strange and cruel anomaly. He gave a small groan and pressed his hand to his belly. The pain was intense and he knew it would be awhile longer before he could stand up and vacate the back stoop where he was sitting to watch the rain, and bury himself into his bed instead.

  


He had nursed himself again through the nausea that onset directly after each meal. But as it often was after forcing himself to endure it that he had began to regret winning out over the struggle to keep his food down. He was considering forcing himself to vomit. It was desperate and seemed like the only way to get some relief from his pain. But his mother had told him he must stop throwing up after meals. He wanted to tell her that maybe his doctor should find out what is really wrong with him and then he'll be able to function like a normal child—to eat without pain and nausea, to be a healthy size, not to suffer the consequences of his body being inadequately nourished—the fatigue, the sluggishness, the bouts of hypocalcemia that make his bones brittle and weak.

  


He couldn't play with other children. He couldn't run with them in the street. He didn't often have that kind of energy to expend and when he had tried to join them it had often resulted in himself being injured from some minor thing. His hand was aching from a game of kotra earlier. He had gotten his neighbor to play with him. A girl called Ena who was younger than him but larger—but most children were larger than him. She was a sore loser and when when she had seen that Kelas was going to make the move to beat her she had grabbed his hand and squeezed it until he had dropped his piece onto the board and was shrieking in pain as his fragile bones crackled beneath her grasp. She had accused him of cheating, and of being a 'crying little hatchie', and had run off leaving him trembling. He hadn't told his mother because he was tired of having to report his injuries to her. He was tired of the reoccurring stress fractures in his feet simply from walking. They always hurt him and it seemed pointless for the doctor to keep repairing them at the rate they returned. He needed the osteoregenerator over his spine frequently and he was tired of that too. More stress fractures in the vertebrae caused by nothing more than walking, sitting, bending; existing.

  


Kelas frequently begged his parents to take him to a better doctor in the city, one who had more resources, one who was more specialized than their local woman, but the family could not afford the expense of seeing such a physician. His mother had been a nurse but she had quit her job to take care of him. His father was a military man but had never had the stuff to rise in rank, and he was older, and should have been retired by then. His income was modest. It certainly did not account for having a child who was chronically ill and showing no signs of improvement after years of shifting diagnoses and varying 'treatments'.

  


Kelas doubled over as a new wave of pain stabbed deep into his belly. It made all of his core muscles clench, and when they finally released they felt like quivering masses of jellied fish-heads. He rubbed his belly gently. It was poking out like a round little ball and he sighed. He hated when it did that because it meant that his intestines were upset, and irritated, and full of gasses that would only give him more pain until the bloat diminished.

  


He finally got up when the chill of the rain seemed to be seeping into him too deeply to withstand any longer. Getting up hurt his feet, his back, his belly. He was tired, and slow, and useless as he dragged himself back into the house. Sometimes his mother called him her 'little old man' because of the way he shuffled, and moved so slowly at times, and complained of his aches. It was very strange to be a child and an elder all at once: just as strange as the rain on the sand.

  


His mother stopped him on his way to his bedroom. She wanted to make sure he had kept his dinner down and he gave her a heavy, sluggish, nod. She wanted to see his hand because he was obviously babying it so he pushed it out of his sleeve where he'd been trying to hide it and showed it to her. It was bruised and swollen and it didn't take any medical equipment for her to know that is was broken. She noted his belly was very swollen too, so she walked him to his little bedroom, and helped him strip out of his tunic. She curled up behind him and rubbed his tender tummy until he fell into a light doze.

  


He could sense that she had left, thinking he had fallen asleep, but he was caught in some strange middle ground where he wasn't deeply asleep but couldn't rouse himself awake either. So he stayed in that strange place and listened to the voices from other parts of the house. She must have left his door opened, he thought very sluggishly, the thought dragging through his mind sounding for several moments like foreign words that he couldn't quite decipher. Door, he thought to himself.

  


The voices from the rest of the house floated in and out like bad dreams.

  


Why does he have to be ill all the time? Must be the fault of your family—no one in mine was ever--We can't take care of him forever--Growing old. Shouldn't have had another child this late in life. Why couldn't the doctor--If only we had more money. Do you think he'll reach emergence? Never be a productive member of-- Doctor Olma is running out of ideas. Thinks he is doing this for attention. Psychosomatic. Making himself sick, faking the pain. He can't make his tummy swell! You might be surprised--Shut up!  


What are we going to do?

  


The next morning Kelas awoke to his mother, father, and doctor hovering over his bed.

  


“He smells strange,” his mother said, wringing her small hands, and speaking about him as though he wasn't there. She sipped the air, “what is it?”

  


“I don't smell anything,” his father barked.

  


“Where do you hurt today?” Doctor Olma asked him. Her questions were always the same.

  


Kelas tried to lift his arm. He remembered that Ena had hurt his hand but it seemed to be throbbing from a distance away. His arm felt too heavy though and he wasn't really quite awake. He was back into that weird state—half-awake, too slow, not really alert, maybe sleeping? He couldn't even tell. But he could hear the adults and see them through a haze. He sipped the air to see if he really did smell funny. He couldn't make sense of the scents. They slid over his olfactory organs but once they got to his brain he just couldn't connect them to anything that made sense. They latched onto random words like 'spoon', 'cloud', 'kotra', and 'emergence'. He seemed to remember having heard one of those words last night but which one he wasn't sure. Anyway none of those things had scents.

  


He felt Doctor Olma working his hand with the osteo-thing. He was trying to recall the word but his mind was still plugging in odd things. Osteo-regnar, he kept thinking. It became so stuck in his mind that he was convinced the doctor was placing a lizard on his hand and he couldn't figure out how that was going to help him.

  


She used the osteo-regnar on his feet too, and then his spine, and he could feel the lizard skittering ticklishly up and down his scales. But why was there a lizard?

  


“How...” Kelas heard himself asking through a thick and murky haze, “how... dih cassha reg...nar?” he slurred the words out and felt more confused than before.

  


“Something's the matter,” he heard his mother's voice quivering, “not like the other times... alert... confused...” her words came through to him in pieces.

  


“Swollen ankles... fluid retention... shallow breathing...” that was Doctor Olma's voice.

  
Kelas heard her say the word 'failure' and that seemed to make everything click for him. He must be dying, he thought. A strange sound came out of him—a weak laugh mingled with a flimsy sob.  


When Kelas woke up again he could feel that he wasn't in his bed. His eyes were still closed but he knew without opening them. He spent so much time in his bed that he knew it intimately and this was not it. He pried his eyes open slowly. He was in a small, sterile, room that was all gray and metallic. His mother was nodding in a chair near his bed and his father was standing at an oblong window, his back towards both of them.

  


“Oh!” came a surprised little squeak from his mother, “you're awake!”

  


She came to his bed and carefully took his hand in hers. She was smiling at him and he couldn't remember having seen her smile like that before. There were tears in her eyes.

  


“Kelas, we're in Culat,” she said, “at the university hospital. You were—but now—oh!” she leaned in and pressed her chufa to his.  
“I was dying?” he asked in a weak voice.

  


“Yes,” she said, lifting her head and watching him closely, “but not now. The doctors here were able to find out what was wrong with you. After they had you stabilized they scanned your DNA and there it was.”

  


Kelas couldn't say anything. He was shocked that they had found his problem so easily after he had spent his childhood suffering, and part of him didn't want to believe it. It was just another lie. Doctor Olma had switched his diagnoses again, and again, and she had never figured out how to effectively treat him for whatever it was that made him so sick. And all it had taken was a matter of moments to scan his DNA? A few tears slid from Kelas' eyes and sat in the curves of his orbital ridges. They were relief, frustration, and fear—fear that the doctors were wrong again.  
“But Doctor Olma...” he said.

  


“The doctors here have better technology than an old country doctor. It... it wasn't her fault, Kelas. This thing you have mimics many other disorders. But you'll be better now,” she cooed, stroking his hair.

  


“I don't understand...” Kelas said. He was having a hard time accepting this.

  


“Just rest now. Some of your organ systems were failing because your disorder was improperly treated for so long. Certain things had built up in your body and you couldn't get rid of them. But the doctors gave you medication to repair your organ systems. Now you just need to rest,” his mother said as she continued to stroke his hair.

  


When they were home again Kelas would be angry to learn that the cause of all of his suffering had been due to one thing: meat.

  


He was in possession of a genetic disorder that was somewhat rare among Cardassians and it meant that his body was incapable of processing certain proteins found in meats and some other foods. Therefore he became seriously ill after consuming them, and his body chemistry became further and further out of balance, leading to other things like his hypocalcemia, anemia, and other deficiencies. By the time he had been taken to Culat toxins had built in his blood to the point that his body could no longer filter them out quickly enough and he had been nearly dead.

  


It was very strange to be home again after a near-death experience. His mother was working to find foods that he could tolerate, and he was given numerous hyposprays each day, full of supplements to rebuild all the stores that had been drained. When his levels were well enough the hyposprays could be reduced down but some of them he would need to take for the rest of his life.

  


His father was distant and angry due to the medical bills they were now drowning under. He was cynical and uncertain that the new treatment regimen would work. Kelas seemed to back up his father's judgment by continuing to throw up after eating almost anything his mother placed in front of him. But the pain, bloating, and chronic diarrhea were gone. Doctor Olma suspected that Kelas had developed an aversion to food—he was afraid that eating would make him ill, and his anxieties surrounding it were giving him trouble keeping things down. His father decided this only went to show that Kelas had indeed been faking the extent of his illness despite the fact that Culat doctors had sat down with the family before Kelas had been discharged and explained to them how serious his condition was and how important it was that he stuck to a certain, very limited, diet and had his hyposprays regularly.

  


The Culat doctors had also explained that they had found a second genetic 'flaw' in his DNA that would impact him in a couple of years as he reached emergence.

  


It was an extra 'x' chromosome which would cause Kelas to develop more feminine traits when he reached puberty. The Culat doctors had suggested hormonal treatments to artificially induce the development of masculine traits but Kelas' father had been in a rage over all of it and had accused the 'city doctors' of 'making shit up' to try and bleed them of more money that they didn't have. He had told Kelas that he was going to be a man and that he didn't need any help from doctors to do that.

  


The next two years of his life Kelas spent recovering from the first eight.

  


By the time he was ten he was well enough to play with the children in the street but he was also too old for it. Sometimes he longed to join in anyway, and other times he felt like he wouldn't know how to play anyway, so it was probably for the best that he just stand back and watch quietly. At least he was able to regularly attend school now and that pleased him very much. He hadn't been able to for years and his mother had taught him at home. It had been important to her that he keep up on his studies and doing well in them had made him feel useful and had given him something to do to pass by the lonely hours he had spent inside and in pain.

  


He found that he was ahead of his peers scholastically, but he was lost socially. By nature Kelas was quiet, and timid, both traits that were unusual for a Cardassian when conversation was so important. He just didn't know how to initiate, and what would he talk about? His experiences were limited to dealing with his illness, and talking on about things he had studied. When engaged in a conversation he chose the later because he wanted to forget about being sick. But his ramblings about books and subjects that were too intense for most children his age tended to get him strange looks from the other children, or yawns, or giggles. Once again his realized he was stuck in that strange place of being a child, and an adult, and yet not quite either of those things.

  


At ten years old many of his peers had already began to differ from him in other ways too. Girls were beginning to get slight little bumps on their chests, and some of the boys growing tall, and wide-shouldered. A few were even shedding and growing the more masculine-defined ridges of adulthood. Kelas remained the smallest boy in his class, smaller than most of the girls, and often mistaken for being several years younger than he was—at least until he opened his mouth and began to speak like a student who had already been to university. Then there was confusion. What a strange little fellow, they said of him.

  


At twelve Kelas finally began to feel and see changes to his body but they were not the sort that the other boys had undergone and they filled him with dread, and fear, and shame. The doctors at Culat had been right about him. He was becoming a girl.

  


The first thing he had noticed were his hips. He still had trouble putting on the least bit of weight and remained very thin but at some point he had noticed that the severe indents of his hips had filled in and they were soft now, even slightly rounded when he was naked. Under his clothing he could hide them more easily. When he was naked he kept touching them, pressing his fingers into the soft pads; it was odd—he had never had a soft part on his body. It was strange because these were things that girls had. He was afraid to see what would happen next—would he get breasts too? Or maybe his ridges wouldn't develop. They would stay small, and smooth, and childish. Maybe his voice wouldn't deepen. Maybe his prUt would not grow—or would his genitals change to something more feminine too? He had studied enough anatomy to know the differences in body structure and sometimes at night he lay awake worrying that his prUt wouldn't be there in the morning. What if one day he woke up with an ajan instead? He took to checking himself every morning, forcing his little prUt to evert so he could see that it was still there. It hurt to do it but he found it necessary for his peace of mind. Soon the ritual had to be done before bed too. Then it escalated to having to be checked every time he went to the bathroom. His behaviors were worrying him and so was his body and he didn't know how to cope. He had only just gotten a handle over his other illness and was doing quite well but now his body found new ways to betray him.

  


His father was beginning to inspect him too. Kelas hated the way the man would look at him. He would comment that Kelas was small, that his shoulders were too narrow, his neck too slender, his ridges underdeveloped. His father cringed when he still spoke with the higher-pitched voice of a child, made soft and gentle by Kelas' timid nature. He learned not to talk at all on days when his father was in an especially terrible mood.

  


At least he could hide his hips away. He thought that his bottom was becoming softer and rounder too but that was something else that could be disguised by a long, loose, tunic. These were minor things compared to his other fears. Sometimes he took to squeezing his brow ridges or the little ones on his chin, hoping to some how 'stimulate' them into maturing.

  


When he tried that one night on his neck ridges he discovered something quite amazing and made an unexpected mess of himself.

  


Things were becoming strange at school too. His peers had never known quite what to make of him but they were growing increasingly stumped or amused by him as he failed to meet the physical standards of the handsome boys, instead more closely resembling the girls, and yet he didn't have breasts, or as far as they could see hips. Sometimes the boys would harass him and ask him to show them his prUt—if indeed he had one at all. The girls were nicer to him so he began to stay with them instead of trying to fit in with the boys. He found that he liked their company better as he didn't feel a constant need to compete or prove himself. Many of them were interested in the sciences, and mathematics, and were more likely to enjoy or at least tolerate his long conversations on such things. One of them suggested he should grow his hair long like theirs. It surprised him to realize he liked the idea of that. He decided to try it but when his hair began to trail down the back of his neck his father would insist upon cutting it into the standard Cardassian male style. Kelas decided that he hated slicking it back. He soothed himself by learning how to braid and do elaborate up-dos for the girls and they liked it too.

  


Their acceptance of him had been more than he could have hoped for. Once they suggested he try on their clothing. He had only agreed to it if they didn't watch him undress. He had put on a dress that one of them had given him to try on. It had been meant for fun and it had felt almost childish to do—both things that had made Kelas feel giddy—to the point that he had forgotten about his hips, and bottom, which he was always used to hiding. He hadn't considered how the cut of the dress would highlight these things.

  


Instead of playfully cat-calling him or encouraging him to show off in the dress, the girls had gone completely silent when he'd come out in it. After a moment he had realized that they were staring at his unusual structure and they didn't know how to process this. Flushing with embarrassment Kelas scurried away and changed into the safety of his trousers and tunic. He returned to them shaking and making a hasty excuse to leave, his heart pounding, terrified that he had just alienated himself from his group of friends and he would find himself alone and excluded again.

  


“Kelas, wait,” a large girl called Ginel broke away from the group and took his hand before he could get away, “maybe... maybe you're like us. Maybe you're a girl... with a prUt,” she said quietly, her cheeks coloring.

  


That was not something he had considered before. It had been explained to him that he was a boy who would develop feminine features. But could it just be that he really was a girl and he just had a prUt instead of an ajan?

  


He gave Ginel a polite nod but he didn't know what to say. He excused himself and spent the evening closed into his room thinking over her words. If he was really a girl that would relieve so many expectations from him. He hated at trying to be masculine. He wasn't even sure what that meant. He attempted to take cues from the other males around him but most of it just didn't click or it felt unnatural. He had felt more like himself when he was with the girls and they weren't expecting him to be a raging display of Cardassian masculinity.

  


This thought turned over in his mind for quite awhile.

  


Eventually he had the terrible idea to speak to his parents about it.

  


“But it isn't just my body!” Kelas complained, “I think more like the girls, I'm good at math and sciences, I don't understand all the posturing—”

  


“Kelas!”

  


“--and the way the boys try to see who is more dominant--”

  


“Kelas!”

  


“--and I don't feel like a--” his father traded interrupting him with his name for slapping him hard across the face. His mother let out a little gasp and covered her mouth.

  


“You are my son, and you will act like it,” his father hissed in his face, flecking his nose with spit, “those doctors put strange things into your mind and your mother encourages them! Letting you be with those girls all the time! Letting you spend all your time studying things that women do! Haven't you read my book on basic military tactics?”

  


Kelas shook his head slowly, resting his palm against the warm patch on his cheek.

  


His father growled at him.

  


“You'll be going to the Military Academy next year. Maybe they'll do what I can't and make a man of you yet,” he hissed.

  


The thought of going to military school made Kelas feel sick. He had hopes of following along the women in his family, most of whom had gone into medicine. His mother had often spoke fondly of her work as a nurse. Since he was older and much healthier than he had been when he was younger, she had even spoken of going back to work. Kelas thought he would like to be a doctor—a better one than Olma had been. He sometimes imagined himself attending the university in Culat, and even living in the city and working there when he'd finished his studies. He was aware that medicine was a field dominated by women but he couldn't help but be drawn to it anyway.

  


Kelas' father took away his PADD full of science texts. He forbid him to spend time with his girl friends. Kelas was too timid to fight back but he imagined arguments with his father in which he yanked his trousers down to show him his hips, or how small his prUt was, or to tell him that he thought he liked boys—anything more that would drive it further into his father that he wasn't the son he wanted and that everything about him clearly indicated that he needed to be allowed to be something else—but of course he did not do any of those things. Talking back to him that once had been hard enough to do. Kelas had been terrified to speak up to his father in such a disrespectful manner. And it had earned him punishments that had dropped him back down into his feelings of isolation and despair.

  


His mother had cried when he had left for the Academy on Kora II. They had both known that he wasn't cut out for the military life. His father had stared him down with daggers of expectations for eyes. Kelas did his best to square his narrow shoulders and meet his father's gaze with anything less than fear, and some measure of confidence, but one of those things he had in great supply, and the other was something he wasn't sure he would ever have.

  


The desert tan uniforms did little to hide Kela's flaws. His soft places were on display because he was given a uniform built for boys who didn't have gently sloping hips and round little bottoms. His body would have been more well-hidden in a girls uniform which was designed to hide their features and make them appear more uniform with the boys. His name was stripped from him and he was given a rank and number designation.

  


At first Kelas was sure he would be completely lost to despair at the institute. He just wasn't cut out for it—and yet he wanted to do well enough to show his father and his peers that he could survive. He was picked on by the other boys in his section, harassed, and at times even assaulted.

  


The boys had a specifically terrible thing that they liked to do to him—they would lure him somewhere and gang up on him, strip him naked, and some would hold him down or restrain him while others would rub roughly at his smooth little neck ridges and his genital slit attempting to force him to evert so that they could see if he really had a prUt or not. Kelas managed to keep himself from erecting the first several times but the more it happened the harder it was to fight it off. They were wearing him down and the head boy who seemed to be the most interested in instigating the entire thing was taking the assault to new levels. One day he forced his fingers into Kelas' slit, spread it apart, and used his thick knuckles to pound at the sensitive flesh until Kelas was sobbing because it hurt him—and his prUt had everted much to the amusement of the boys who had a good laugh about how small it was. Kelas had done his best to ignore it and had comforted himself by thinking at least now that they'd seen his prUt, this terrible 'game' would be over.

  


He was right that most of the boys had lost interest by then but One and Three continued this—the larger Three would hold him while One forced his slit open, or Three would hold him while One shoved his prUt down Kelas' throat, and One grew especially delighted when Kelas would surprise and horrify himself by coming.

  


Kelas spent his time struggling to hold himself together and to survive the institute with his mind intact. He was growing increasingly confused about his gender, and sexual preferences. It was upsetting to him that his nightmares of being assaulted by the other boys would have him waking up in a panic attack, but also wet and aroused. He had no one to ask such questions to, and even if there had been such a person, he probably would have been too embarrassed. He just swallowed down the self-loathing and confusion and focused on doing what he needed to do to complete his training.

  


He was keeping up poorly until he was able to discover his strengths. He did not have raw power, nor did he have any bit of intimidating force, but having spent a great deal of his life struggling through a painful illness had toughened him in ways that he hadn't realized. When it came to tests of stamina he could easily outlast his peers. They were unused to functioning at a higher level of pain and discomfort. Kelas was not. When it came to tactics Kelas' mind was the sharpest in his unit. These things began to earn him some level of respect and the 'games' that One and Three played with him began to decrease in frequency until one day, One approached him alone and actually asked him to suck his prUt. Kelas felt his own response to that was very strange—the fact that on some level he wanted to, even after all that had happened, must have been very sick of him. It had made him feel good to be asked when he spent much of his alone time fearing that no one would ever really want him intimately due to his differences. In that moment it upset him deeply how desperate he was for positive attention that he would even take it from his former abuser.

  


Kelas nodded his head subtly, sat himself down on his knees, and opened his mouth.

  


Around this time he had become obsessed with being tidy and clean. He went above and beyond what was required to pass an inspection and when he was able to clean himself he scrubbed until his scales were stinging. It gave him that same frantic feeling he had felt when he had been recovering from his illness but had still had the compulsion to be sick after meals—the fear that his food was going to double him over in pain for hours, and hours, and drive him close to death again had been difficult to fight against. It was the same crawling, clawing, need he had had when he'd started puberty and had gotten stuck within the neurotic need to check his prUt many times a day to make sure it was still there or to check if it had grown at all. Kelas hated being subject to such demanding routines and that no matter what he did he couldn't seem to yank himself out of these things when they befell him.

  


He continued to survive the Academy, however, without being rejected. Each year at evaluation he was caught by surprise that he was still allowed to stay. When he was kept on for his final year of training he realized that he needed to do something to get himself discharged. Despite managing to succeed well enough to pass, he still wasn't a 'military man' and the thought of a life serving in this capacity made his heart race and his lungs ache. But Kelas was clever and he decided to use the very training the Academy had given him to his own advantage.

  


He had become very good at hiding when groups were sent out into the Vast: an unforgiving desert terrain in which many training programs were conducted. Much of this he attributed to learning breathing techniques and self-control. Kelas practiced these often in his spare time since he hoped to reduce the constant screaming anxiety that lived inside of his skull and the ends of every nerve he owned. He had become so good at it that he could stop breathing long enough to alarm One, with whom he sometimes practiced.

  


One day in line for breakfast Kelas decided to try his technique. While the others chattered he concentrated on holding his breath, keeping his lungs from expanding, feeling his heartbeat and seeing if he could make it slower, and slower. He kept his eyes opened but he unfocused them and turned his attention inward while he listened to the thumping in his ears slow down until there was silence.

  


The next thing he knew he had woken up on the floor with students and instructors surrounding him. After being examined by the Academy head nurse it was found that nothing was wrong with him and he must have just fainted from exhaustion. His plan had began to work, however. Over the next months he continued faking his 'fainting' spells. It seemed ironic to him that at the height of his illness his father had began to imply that he was faking, and he hadn't been, but now that he was faking an illness, none of the Academy medical staff questioned it. They grew used to having to retrieve him from somewhere because he had passed out. Eventually it was decided that his fainting spells warranted a medical discharge from the institute.

  


Kelas was sent home.

  


He came home feeling like he'd accomplished something just by surviving the first eighteen years of his life. He also came home with a generous streak of gray in his hair and the firm decision to grow it very long to upset his father. Of course it should have been enough that he was discharged from the Academy—his father hated him for being too 'weak' to complete his training. But oddly enough Kelas just didn't care. He had tried his father's plan for his life, he had done well enough, and he would have succeed in it had he not sabotaged his own path. But he would have been a miserable mess of a person had he continued down that way. Making the decision to get off that ride had been a big deal for someone as timid and submissive as Kelas was, and he couldn't help but feel good about it. He had his own ideas about what he wanted to do with his life, and had decided that after he had saved some latinum for himself that he would arrange transport to Culat, where he planned to find a job and hang around the university attempting to convince someone there to allow him to take the aptitude test for science, mathematics, and medicine.

  


While he was home his mother got him a job keeping records at the clinic she'd been working at since he'd left for the Academy. He spent the summer with his nose buried in files and straightening out the mess the former clerk had left. How any self-respecting Cardassian could make a mess of a filing system was beyond comprehension to Kelas, but it had happened. One of the doctors had even given him an extra bit of latinum near the end of the summer because she had been so pleased with how much more efficient the office had become under Kelas' implementation of order. He had ventured to ask her for sponsorship to Culat University so he could study medicine, but she had laughed it off as a joke. On a whim he had found Doctor Olma, who was no longer practicing due to her age, and asked her the same question. But she hadn't the money to sponsor him and discouraged him from pursing that route at all. She told them that medicine was a job for women and that he needed to do something more suited to his strengths as a man.

  


Kelas was tired of people assuming things about him, and trying to steer him into directions he didn't want to go. At the end of his summer his hair was just barely long enough to weave into a knobby little braid so he did. He took a couple of outfits his mother had made to his specifications that they show off his hips and bottom, a few books, and the latinum he had saved, and Kelas boarded the transport to Culat City.

  


He sat himself down in the back of the transport and sighed. It felt like a dense cloud of choking dust was lifting out of his throat as his home town grew smaller and smaller in the distance behind him. He closed his eyes thinking a nap would be a good way to pass the time.

  


“Kelas?”

  


He opened his eyes only a second after he had closed them.

  


“Ginel!” Kelas scooted himself towards the window to make room for her. She was a large woman and her very pregnant belly made her even larger.

  


“The last time I saw you was the day before you left for the Academy. Was the uniform as hideous as you had expected?” she asked, laying a hand at the top of her belly-mound.

  


“Oh, dear, it was far worse,” Kelas said.

  


“It must have been stressful. You didn't have that streak in your hair when you left,” she noted.

  


“It was... ah... challenging,” Kelas said. His fingers found the streak of gray at his temple and slid gently along it.

  


“I like it. It suits you. You always seemed older than the rest of us, somehow,” she said.

  


“Thank you, I think so to,” he said, “but I think there's something more surprising between the two of us than my hair—look at you!”

  


Ginel chuckled.

  


“This thing? I'm used to it by now. This will be my third child,” she said.

  


“Th-third?” Kelas stuttered, “I—pardon me it's just that—ah...” he had just turned nineteen over the summer and she was his age. It was difficult for him to process that she already had three children, despite the common fact that many Cardassians, especially those of the lower classes, were bonded and starting their families at young ages.

  


“The twins just turned a year old. This one's due very soon,” she said, “I like being a mother, and I like breeding. Everyone respects a breeding female,” she said. She pulled some textile work from her bag that involved several strands and several more long utensils and she began to work on it, draping the part of the work that was finished over her belly.

  


“Do you plan to have a large family?” Kelas asked.

  


“Yes. I want as many as I can,” she said. Kelas slouched a little. “My sister has nine and I plan to outdo her by a few.”

  


“Oh,” Kelas said.

  


He wasn't sure how else to respond. It wasn't uncommon for Cardassians to have large families but he was still thinking of this girl as his childhood friend, and not only that but he had the urge to lecture her on resource shortages, and how she ought to think of herself as more than a reproductive organ, but he held his tongue. If this is what she wanted to do with her life he reasoned he had no right to lecture her. After all he was headed out to make some unconventional choices about his own life and he wouldn't be happy to listen to someone lecturing him. Ginel would not be the first or last Cardassian woman to prize herself due to her fertility and contribution to reproducing for the Union.

  


The two of them passed the time talking about things they used to do to as though they were elders reflecting back over their lives rather than young adults barely out of emergence.

  


“Did you ever decide if you were a girl?” Ginel asked him at last, pausing in her textile work, and lowering her voice.

  


“First of all, if I had decided so, I would be a woman. Not a girl. I'm a grown adult,” Kelas said, “but I've been so busy with other things that I have put off thinking about it too much. I just don't know what to make of myself. I am as confused as anyone who sees me and is trying to figure out 'what I am',” he said, “maybe I will learn something about myself in Culat. Maybe I won't. But I do know that I want to study medicine, and I plan to dedicate much of my focus to that, instead of driving myself mad fretting over things that I just don't know how to begin to decipher.”

  


Ginel frowned.

  


“I don't think you should ignore it,” she said, “isn't it strange to be... nothing?”

  


Kelas bristled at her question. He didn't respond. He understood what she meant—did it feel strange to be in this undefined middle ground where he was something not quite male, and not quite female, by societies standards. That must have been what she meant. But the word "nothing" lingered in his mind even after their transport had reached Culat and they had both disembarked.

  


Ginel gave him a warm smile and told him that he was welcome to stay with she and her bondmate if he needed a place. At this point he was homeless and it would have been logical to take her up on the offer, but after considering that he'd be living with two screaming one-year-olds, and very soon a screaming hatchie, along with a woman who seemed to think that he was 'nothing'... it just didn't seem appealing. He would find his own place to stay, and maybe eventually, he would find his 'place' in other ways too.


	2. The City

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tw: chronic illness, gender dysphoria, gender issues, sexual confusion, mature sexual themes, trauma/assault, mental illness.

Kelas' first impression of Culat was that it was overwhelming. He was used to life on a much smaller scale. Culat was fast-paced, always full of people, and any scenic views were blocked out by Cardassian architecture. Buildings upon buildings were crammed together into sectors and capped off at the tops by wafting plumes of smog from factories that sprawled along the bay. There was a foul smell to the air but Kelas supposed he would get used to it. The dirty streets and crowded sidewalks didn't appeal to his current compulsion towards cleanliness either, but it did appeal to his desire to remain small, and hidden, and inconspicuous. Here he could slip by without drawing much attention even while he was wearing one of his mother's outfits that accentuated his feminine features. 

He spent his day seeking work and a place to stay but as evening settled down onto the streets in long shadows he began to debate just paying for a night in a seedy hotel, versus making do on the street, and saving his latinum. 

Kelas tucked himself into the mouth of an alleyway to think it through and to count his hypospray cylinders. They were crucial to maintaining his health but he currently did not have access to a medical replicator to order more of them. He needed to ration them carefully and for a long while he just hid himself away in the shadows and counted the little cylinders again, and again, and again. When he was satisfied that he had counted them a sufficient number of times he stored them back in his bag and walked along the sidewalk whispering the number to himself.

He stopped at a stand that was selling various street food and settled on buying some vegetable chunks that were coated in batter. It didn't seem very healthy but at least it wouldn't make him ill. But upon biting into the vegetables he found them to be oil-logged mush. Later his stomach began to cramp and he could only assume that the vendor had lied to him when Kelas had asked if they had been fried in some sort of animal product.

Finding a place to stay for the night was out of the question with as much pain as he was in from the damned food vendor. He curled up on a bench to wait it out and hope for better opportunities the next morning.

Kelas was grouchy upon waking the next morning and finding that his belly was still bloated and uncomfortable. The pain had passed and he had gotten some sleep but he was feeling moody so he marched himself back to the food stand and waited for it to open. He had played through the confrontation in his head; oh, the things he wanted to say to that vendor—and had imagined himself standing up to the man and possibly even getting some monetary compensation for his night of suffering. But when he opened his mouth to speak his voice was small and unsteady.

“Your food made me ill,” he said, squaring his shoulders, and pushing himself up on his toes to try to appear taller than he was.

“Sorry, lady. Food disagrees sometimes. Try something else next time,” the man shrugged at him.

“And—and--wh-what if I spread it all around the city that your food stall made me ill? That it sent me to the hospital? Do you think that your customers will still give you their latinum, or pass you by for a less dangerous option?” Kelas said.

“How about I have you arrested for threatening me?” the vendor said, “trying to smear me.”

Kelas rounded his shoulders. He wasn't sure if the man was bluffing, or if he could push back, but his instincts usually told him to play it safe, so instead of standing his ground he slunk away and told himself that it wasn't worth it. He needed to find work for himself more than he needed to win some small battle against a food vendor.

Kelas decided to venture into the seedier part of town. 

Around midday he was able to speak to a foreman at one of the factories on the bay and he got himself a temporary job to see if he'd 'work out'. The foremen seemed to doubt it judging by the look he'd been giving to Kelas, but that had only made him more determined to try. Kelas offered to start work on the spot and he was pointed to the dock. He found a place to stash his bag away and got to work. The men and women who labored around him were built large and sturdy with backs and shoulders for lifting. Kelas was not but his stamina and ability to work through pain came in handy for him again. By the end of the shift he was sore in every imaginable spot but he had completed his tasks. The worst of it had been his nagging anxiety over his bag being stolen, which would mean that he wouldn't have his medication, so he kept repeating the number of vials he had in his bag while he worked. He whispered it under his breath like an old Hebetian chant. It kept him from losing his mind over the situation.

Luckily his bag was still in the hiding spot he had chosen and relief washed over him once he had it in his hands again. 

After work Kelas found a place with vacant rooms and rented one for the night. He had enough latinum to rent it out for longer but he decided it was best to take it day by day for now. His dock job might not end up being steady if the foreman or someone else decided they didn't like him. 

A week passed by and Kelas had gone to work every day, breaking his back laboring on twelve hour shifts, with meager pay to compensate. The factory provided one break at midday and offered some slop that they called food in the chow line. Kelas assumed this was cheaper than installing and maintaining replicators. But it left him unable to eat at midday because each day the 'slop' heaped into their bowls was the same thing: a stew that smelled meaty which meant he could not have it.

One day he had ventured to ask one of his co-laborers what was in it.

“Parts of the zabu what won't sell at the market,” the man had said, “organs and fat gristly bits. Guess you're too good for eating whatever'll keep your belly full. Not me. I grew up starving on the streets. Some folks don't get the luxury of being picky 'bout their food,” he spat.

Kelas could get breakfast and dinner at least and that was enough for him to survive on. There was a bar in the basement of the building where he was renting his room and he had taken to visiting it nightly. It was a low-key sort of place where service drones came in after a hard day busting their backs For Cardassia and sat down with bottles of kanar and dented cups full of cheap cactus ale and spoke to each other about nothing. Kelas had made friends with the young bartender called Dara Marzata, and she made sure he had a vegetarian meal in the evening, with enough that he could save some for left-overs for the next mornings breakfast. 

“I know it's rough to be different, and I know how it is to be without,” Dara had said, sliding her long white hair back from her face. Her colorless fingers filled a cup with cactus ale and slid it towards him, “on the house,” she said.

Eventually Kelas began to stay late at the bar to help her clean up and she would share some of her meager tips with him. She would give him a bitter laugh and tell him it was a wonder she got any tips at all since she was a 'disgusting pale thing' but that some men would do anything once they had enough kanar in them. Kelas had gotten drunk one night after closing and informed her that she was lovely, and that society was full of shit.

“And I'm going to practice medicine one day,” Kelas said, climbing up onto a vat of cactus ale. Replicators might have been popular in use but Cardassians still preferred their alcohol to be authentic.

“Right, and I'll own my own nightclub one day,” Dara rolled her eyes, “get down from there before you fall, you silly thing.”

“Oh, oh, don't call me a thing!” Kelas said. He paused to tip his dented cup to his lips but found it empty, “it ssss-topped...” he said, referring to the cup as though it should have been spontaneously producing ale, “oh--”

“Alright then, get down from that vat, you silly man,” Dara corrected herself, and offered her hand to Kelas, wiggling it and making her long claws click at him.

“I don't know abou'that either,” he sighed, “I don't know wha'y'd call sssomeone like me. If I'm a man I mussbe... some sorta lie.”

He placed his hand in hers and she helped him down.

“See?” Dara said, “you're no different from the rest of us. We're all some sort of lie.”

“Th'ifference isss that I don' wannabe,” Kelas said. He rested his head against her shoulder.

“Oh, you're a mopey drunk, aren't you?” she asked, stroking his hair gently.

“I'unno,” Kelas slurred. The ale was making him feel sleepy and slow, “m'never been drink before.”

Kelas was grateful that Dara helped him to his room and into bed. His next day at work was rough since he was suffering through his first hangover. But in true Kelas Parmak fashion he powered himself through it and he only threw up once when he smelled that day's disgusting stew. Sitting out on the dock after work, dangling his feet over the murky water, he had to admit that he had come a long way. He was far from where he wanted to be in life, that much was certain, but on the other hand he had gone from a child who had regularly gotten stress fractures in his spine and feet, to an adult who could put in a twelve hour day lifting heavy things with the best of them. His muscles always screamed at him by the time he was done but what he accomplished made him feel proud; and that was a new feeling. He liked it and chose to savor it though it usually only lasted him until he made it home and the exhaustion set in. 

He was getting very little sleep because he liked to spend his evenings visiting with Dara and helping her in the bar, which put him to bed late. Then he'd need to be at the docks by sunup. That also left him no time at all to visit Culat campus and beg for his aptitude test. But a month into his dock labor he was rewarded with being taken on as a regular employee. This meant he would now get his day off—one for every eight that he worked. That day was a treasure to him and kept him going when he was certain the exhaustion and pain would drop him to his knees. He began to visit Culat on each of his free days and just being on the campus made him feel alive, and closer to his goal, even when his request was rejected again and again. Kelas intended to keep showing up and asking until someone got sick enough of him to give in and let him take the damned assessment. 

His frustrations were rising as he had been in Culat for the better part of a year and had made no progress towards attending the university. The pride he felt at being able to keep up on the docks was beginning to wear away into the constant weariness he felt. When he laid down at night to try to sleep his exhausted mind was pelted with anxieties and fears, doubts, and questions he had no answers to. They spun round and round his head refusing to let up no matter how desperate he became for some relief from them. He had began to consider wasting his money on alcohol more frequently, getting himself so drunk each night that he just passed out, but he knew that was something he could not do—his mind had always been valuable to him and he could not set about ruining it with strong kanar. He still wanted to have a future that was better than running himself ragged on the docks and sleeping in a dingy room that was really no bigger than a closet. 

Sometimes he would find distractions from his racing mind by indulging himself in sexual fantasies. He was after all young and full of the need. He would lay in bed and recall the few sexual encounters he had had up to this point in his life. He would recreate them—tying a scarf too tightly around his neck to simulate the way Three had sometimes held him captive with one arm squeezing around his throat so that Kelas had barely been able to breathe, shoving his fingers down his throat to recreate the feeling of One's prUt choking him, forcing his slit open and pounding at the sensitive inside until it was too painful to stand—and he would come, trembling, keening, crying. He would feel so good that the invasive thoughts and the problems he could not solve would just float away from him. It would only be later when the relief of his orgasm would dissipate that the guilt and confusion would set in again. He felt that something must be very wrong with him that he got off on recreating situations in which he had been abused. 

At work he had began sitting with a man called Ekvar Prelat at chow time. Kelas had been drawn to him because he was a very large man, and very ruggedly attractive. Prelat had began to make his way into Kelas' strange fantasies. He would often replace Three, or One, with Prelat when he fantasized. He would imagine Prelat stalking him in his little bedroom, shoving him onto the bed, yanking his arms fiercely above him, and tying his wrists to the bed frame. He imagined Prelat's prUt to be absurdly large and how delighted he would be to touch it, to suck it, to shove it into the little virginal hole that Kelas liked to stretch with his fingers. 

He had began flirting very openly with Prelat in some stupid hope that Prelat might actually want to play with him sometime. Dara had brought it up to him that she'd noticed how he'd began to flirt more openly with some of their regular patrons at the bar too. He was routinely ignored, or growled at, and on the nights when he was feeling especially dejected, Dara would tell him that he was too good-looking to be ass-fodder for the lumbering service drones. He did not tell her that he would have gladly been their ass-fodder. He was embarrassed to be so desperate for attention. 

One day Kelas had found himself alone in the restroom with Prelat. Really he had followed him in on purpose and been delighted when he found that there were no other men or women with them. Kelas pretended to wash his hands under the sonic wash station. The machine was scuffed, dented, and barely clinging to the wall mount. It looked as though it had gone several rounds with the fists of angry workers. Kelas glanced at his reflection in the smeared, crumpled, metal. His face stared back at him distorted and strange. 

“Prelat,” Kelas said, drawing up his courage, and doing his best not to tremble, “I bet you have a lovely prUt, don't you?”

It was very straightforward compared to most Cardassian flirting, but Kelas was still a socially awkward person. Prelat responded by grabbing him under the arms and lifting him right off his feet. Kelas gave a squeak of surprise. His neck ridges flushed immediately as Prelat sat him down on a broken bit of counter top, shoved his narrow thighs apart, and stepped in between them.

“Ooh,” Kelas cooed. Prelat grabbed his waist roughly with one large hand.

“Do you want to see it?” Prelat growled.

“Yes, yes,” Kelas leaned forward hunching his shoulders a bit and tipping his head in a submissive posture. Prelat shoved his dirty work pants down and rubbed his slit until his prUt everted. “Oh!” Kelas cried in delight. It wasn't as absurdly large as he had imagined in his fantasies, but then again it was unlikely that any Cardassian would have been in possession of a prUt of that stature. Prelat's shining pink prUt was still impressive—much larger than his own. It made Kelas feel weak with desire as though his spine had turned to water.

“Can I touch it? Can I sssuck it for you?” Kelas whined, overly eager to please this man.

“We don't have time to drag this out,” Prelat said, “someone could come in at any moment.”

Kelas spread his legs wider in a clear invitation. Prelat chuckled.

“Good girl,” he said.

Prelat's claws raked Kelas' hips as he yanked his work pants down and let them hang around the tops of Kela's boots. Kelas was still processing 'good girl' and wondering mildly if Prelat preferred to think of him as a woman, or if he was trying to humiliate him. Either way it didn't matter to Kelas.

“Touch me, please, Prelat,” Kelas reached for Prelat's thick ridges, so much larger than his own, and colored a deep, dark, blue. Prelat snagged Kelas' wrists and pinned them behind him. Kelas shuddered and wiggled his hips wanting Prelat to open him. 

Without warning Prelat shoved his prUt into Kelas' genital slit with such a powerful thrust of his hips that black spots danced in front of Kelas' eyes. His mouth opened in a silent cry of pain and pleasure. Prelat tried again and Kelas thrashed his head from side to side.

“Open for me,” Prelat growled.

“I am, I am,” Kelas panted. He tried to spread his legs wider but his muscles were already trembling with the effort.

“Why can't I--” Prelat tried to push his prUt in deeper, “what's the matter with your ajan!” Prelat barked.

Kelas was wrapped in some haze of pleasure and pain and it took him a moment to understand.

“My ajan? I don't—oh...” the pleasure haze had suddenly vanished and was replaced by fear. Prelat sipped the air as though he could smell the change. He yanked his prUt out of Kelas' slit and jammed his fingers in feeling around roughly until he found Kelas' prUt still hidden inside of him. 

Prelat's fist cracked across Kelas' cheekbone splitting it and spilling dark purplish blood. Prelat yanked him down from the counter, threw him onto the dirty floor, and began to kick him in a rage. 

“You're a man!” Prelat roared, bringing the heel of his work boot down onto Kelas' transverse ribs. The sound of them snapping made Kelas dry-heave and his core muscles spasming only made the pain in his ribs soar to unexpected heights. He couldn't get up and curled himself into a ball to try to protect himself a little bit. Prelat continued to scream at him about his hair, his hips, his disgusting little prUt—until finally Kelas realized that the beating had stopped and the only sound was his ragged breathing and his heart pounding in his ears.

He tried his best to at least fix his pants so that he wouldn't be half-naked when someone found him. When the shock of the situation began to pass he curled in on himself and cried silently feeling very sorry for himself and washed over with that old friend: despair. He began to think that maybe he should go home, see if he could get his job back as file clerk at the clinic, and give up on everything else. But eventually he got himself up on all fours, and then somehow to his feet, realizing that he could not just lay on the filthy floor and wait for someone to find him. The pain in his ribs kept him hunched over and moving slowly but he made it to the company nurse. No one had even bothered to pause in their work and ask him if he needed any help. The nurse herself barely spoke to him and seemed put out that she had to attend to someone at all.

“Just fix my ribs, and I'll go home,” Kelas said. 

“Do you have permission to leave shift early?” she asked him.

He shook his head while she hovered an outdated osteoregenerator over his ribs. He remembered Doctor Olma fixing his hand on the morning when he'd almost died and how he had scrambled the name of the device in his mind and had thought that it was a regnar. It was a good thing that his health had improved years ago and that his supplements prevented him suffering hypocalcemia as a result of malnutrition. Had his bones still been as brittle as they had when he was a child he would have been far worse off than he was now—though really if that had been the case he never would have been able to do such a demanding job without breaking himself on the first day anyway. He wouldn't have been well enough to come to the city on his own at all. 

The nurse switched out her osteoregenerator for a dermal one and lifted it to Kelas' split cheek but he gently urged her hand away.

“Leave the rest,” he said.

He slid down from her table and adjusted his tunic. His ribs were still sore but they were no longer broken. He could stand straight and breathe without fearing the splintered bits were going to lance into an internal organ. 

He headed for the door.

“You'll have to ask permission to leave your shift early, or just get back to work,” she said, “I've treated men with worse injuries and sent them back to the dock.”

“I have someplace better to be,” Kelas said, and he left the docks intent that he was not going to return.

He limped his way to the nearest transport stop and waited for the next shuttle. His hip felt out of place and he tried to lean various ways or press on it to get it back to where it needed to be but it didn't much help. When the transport arrived it seemed that the driver was going to refuse him entry due to his freshly injured face. But Kelas paid him two extra slips of latinum and promised to sit in the back where he wouldn't cause any trouble.

Kelas rode the transport to the university. 

Instead of hanging around the medical hall to speak to professors, or going to the assessment office to beg, he went straight to the head of the department. He had been trying for months to see this woman but she always seemed to be out of her office and her assistant had kept promising that she would have the head contact Kelas yet he had never heard a word. He sat himself down in front of the door to her office and refused to move until she showed up to throw him out herself. He expected security to be called but the office assistant allowed him to sit there. She seemed to feel sorry for him with his dirty clothing, and his face all bruised, and clotted with dried blood. She brought him a cup of water and a s'kot bar—a vegetable wafer with yamok flavored filling. When he gobbled it down as though he hadn't eaten for a week she offered him some of her dried rokat fish too but he had to decline. 

Eventually a woman approached the office. She wasn't much taller than Kelas was but with her graying hair done up in an elaborate updo, it gave her several more inches on him. He got to his feet while she flicked her cold gaze over him.

“What do you want?” she asked, as she punched a code into the little pad next to her door, “you look like a common bar-brawler... though rather scrawny to be engaging in such risky behavior. It's no wonder your face looks like it's been sat on by a riding hound.”

Kelas winced.

“It wasn't a bar brawl, and I'm not a brawler--” he followed her into her office when the door slid open.

“You're the one that's been haunting campus begging to take the aptitude test,” she said, moving to her desk and having a seat in a pointy-looking high backed chair. Kelas noted the plaque on her desk which read 'Doctor Unid Nevek, Head of Medical Studies'.

“Yes, that's all I want,” Kelas said, standing before her desk and attempting to make himself look small, “I want to show the university that I have what it takes to become a medical student. I know it isn't common for men to go into the sciences but why can't I try! I'm not an ordinary man, anyway. I have a genetic condition--”

Nevek lifted a PADD and held it out to Kelas. He stared at it for several moments before taking it with trembling hands.

“If you run over the allotted time you will fail. I will supervise you to ensure you're not cheating in any manner. This is your only chance to complete this assessment. You had better make it good,” Nevek steepled her fingers in front of her and clicked her long black nails together, “sit.”

Kelas sat himself down in one of the chairs in front of her desk and got to work.

It seemed like hours had passed by the time he was finished. He handed the PADD back to Nevek, trembling even harder than before, and she scanned over the results stone-faced. After a few moments she sat the PADD down on her desk.

“We will be in contact with you to let you know the results of your assessment,” she said flatly.

It wasn't as good as he had expected—he had hoped that he would have been accepted to the university on the spot, which he had to admit was stupid of him, but still... he stood and thanked her profusely, giving her several polite little bows, to let her know how grateful he was for this chance.

When he returned home he went straight for the bar to tell Dara about his good news. Before he could speak she was shrieking about his face and dragging him into the kitchen so she could replicate an cold compress.

“Are you mad!” Kelas squawked, “cold is terrible! I don't want to be cold!”

“I'm aware, but it'll help the swelling. You look like you've been sat on by a--”

“Riding hound,” Kelas finished for her, “Doctor Nevek said the same thing.”

Kelas glared at the compress Dara was offering to him but he took it reluctantly and held it to his cheek with a hiss.

“Doctor Nevek?” Dara asked. She popped the cork on a bottle of kanar, “have a swig of that for your pain,” she said.

Kelas waved the bottle away.

“This is nothing,” he said, “and besides, I don't want any kanar to drown out how good I feel right now.”

“Your face has been smashed in and you feel good?” Dara narrowed her eyes at him, “you really are some kind of freak.”

“Don't say that,” Kelas said lowly, turning away from her.

“Hey, Kel, I'm sorry,” she said, “I was only teasing. Please... tell me your good news, love?”

“Doctor Unid Nevek—she's the head of the medical department at the university—she allowed me take the aptitude test!”

Dara shrieked and clapped her hands together.

“That's wonderful! And what did she say? Are you going to the university?”

“I don't know yet. She'll... contact me to let me know,” Kelas said.

Dara decided that this called for a celebration. She brought out her stringed instrument to play for the patrons and declared half-off happy hour in honor of Kelas Parmak and his Beautiful Bruised Face. Half-off happy hour lasted all evening. Getting drinks at a steal was cause for anyone to have a party. The place was loud and alive with drunk Cardassians and Dara made her instrument wail and screech. It felt good to be celebrated rather than beaten on the floor of a dirty factory bathroom. Kelas enjoyed his night and at some point Dara sent him back to the store room to get another crate of kanar but he had slumped over a vat of cactus ale and fallen asleep instead.

“Fucking Hebetian Goddesses—agh--” Kelas groaned the next morning when he tried to sit up. Dara was asleep at his feet and he nudged the back of her head with his boot, “don't you ever let me get that blasted drunk again. My head feels like it's in another dimension,” he hissed.

Dara stirred awake and sat up to regard Kelas who was still clinging to the vat of cactus ale like he was adrift in the sea and this was his life preserver to keep his head above the waves. 

“I have a cure for hangover,” Dara said, “I wouldn't be a good bar tender if I didn't, now would I?”

Kelas groaned.

She returned with something thick and disgusting in a glass and shoved it into Kelas' face.

“What is it?” he asked, “it looks like--”

“I know it looks like hec,” she said, using the word for 'semen', “but it'll help.”

“I still need to know what it is,” Kelas said.

“It's zabu milk and--”

“No,” he cut across her, “my dear, I can't. Being a vegetarian is not something I chose for some moral reason—I can't tolerate certain proteins. Maybe a little zabu milk wouldn't make me too ill, but I don't feel like risking it. I suppose... sometime if I could have a small bit of zabu cream... I might endure a stomach ache for it. I do miss it now and then.”

“I'm sorry,” Dara said. She chugged back the concoction herself and sat the empty cup aside, “I guess I'll have to start cutting you off when you get overzealous with the liquor then,” she reached over and patted Kelas' head affectionately.

“Please do,” he said.

Kelas passed another dismal month working at the factory. He had at least asked to switch shifts in order to avoid Prelat. Working nights actually agreed with him better than working days did. Kelas thought that the docks were almost beautiful at night and having come from a small desert town he never grew tired of seeing so much water. When he had any moment to do so he would sit and watch the moonlight sparkle in silver ripples off the bay and he would feel a sense of calm that didn't often settle over him. He was generally a very anxious fellow. Any respite from that anxiety was so lovely that it almost felt too good for him to hold onto for too long.

One night Dara came to visit him after she had closed the bar. She brought him a sandwich of flatbread with vegetable paste and pressed seagrass and they sat on the dock together.

“You're always feeding me,” Kelas teased her.

She patted his belly happily.

“Food is love,” Dara said, “and you have nothing to worry about with that tiny waist of yours.”

“No, but my hips--”

“--are subtle and lovely,” Dara said. She slipped her arm around him and gave his hip a little squeeze, “you're a good man, Kelas. It's a shame we're both gay, because I really love you.”

Kelas gave her a small smile.

“I love you too, dear,” he said, “and we don't need to be romantic to care for one another.”

“How did you get so sweet?” Dara cooed. She slid the tie out of his hair and let it fall free. The ends of his hair brushed the bottoms of his shoulder blades now and she stroked it gently. The gray streak glittered in the moonlight like liquid latinum. 

Kelas closed his eyes and let her stroke his hair. It seemed like ages since he had gotten some form of positive attention and he drank in her affection desperately. When he finished his sandwich Dara eased him down so that his head was in her lap and she continued to stroke his hair, and now and then she would slide her hand over his hip, and she would tell him that he was lovely. By the time the sun was rising over the bay Kelas felt too relaxed to move. But the morning crew would be coming to relieve the night shift and he had already been on break for too long. No doubt he would be reprimanded, but as far as he was concerned, it had been worth it.

Walking home that morning Kelas decided to stop at the market to pick up something special for Dara as a thank-you for having been so kind to him. He was considering buying her a little potted cactus to keep on the bar and was carefully looking them over when he heard his name.

“Kelas!”

He turned to see Ginel waving at him. She was still quite round though she must have laid by then. The dark circles around her eyes worried him but she smiled brightly and turned so he could see that the twins were strapped to her back in a double slings.

“Oh, Ginel, they're lovely yearies!” 'Yeary' or 'Yearling' was a term used to refer to the stage between hatchling, and child, and was usually applied to the first two years of life. Kelas held his hand out to one of the yearies and it let go of Ginel's neck and reached for Kelas instead. Once it had a hold of his finger it made happy little chattering noises. The other was busy sucking on its fist and drooling. Kelas laughed. “Tell me their names!”

“Oh, Kelas, I still call them hatchies,” Ginel chuckled, “I know they're too old for it but... humor me. And don't get me started talking about my family or I'll go on forever!” Ginel said, “but their names are Gavik and Larot. If one of them is sucking their fist, then that'll be Gavik. That's his favorite thing to do! Larot is the chatterer.”

“They're really lovely,” Kelas said again, “what about the new hatchling?”

Ginel's smile faltered.

“I laid a couple weeks after I saw you on the transport but it never hatched,” she said, “the midwife said it wasn't developed correctly. But—we're trying again,” she rubbed her belly, “I'll lay again in a few months.”

“Then let me help you,” Kelas said, offering to take the basket of items she was carrying, “you must be tired.” 

He helped her finish her shopping and she was indeed moving very slowly, and kept losing her concentration, and forgetting what she needed to buy. Breeding women were known to grow very lethargic, especially in the later months, and Kelas was worried that she wasn't getting enough sleep or that she'd fall asleep while she was alone with the twins and there wouldn't be anyone to tend to them.

“Do you have someone to help you with the twins?” he said as he walked her to her apartment.

Ginel shook her head.

“Not really, Kelas. All my family is back in our home town. We moved here so my bondmate could find work, and now he's gone all day. Long shifts,” she sighed, “he's a good man.”

“I'm sure he is,” Kelas replied, “but you must be exhausted. Why don't I start coming for visits? I could watch Gavik and Larot a few hours each day. I'll need to come early, though, just after my work shift ends. But you could get some extra sleep at least.”

“You would do that for me?” Ginel began to tear up, “oh, Kelas, I thought you were angry with me after we parted ways that day on the transport. You never came to visit.”

Kelas waved his hand dismissively.

“A mistake on my part,” he said.

Ginel asked Kelas in for tea and after they'd had a few cups and a good conversation he sent her to bed and kept company with the twins. Being alone with them made him remember that he had no idea how to interact with children, but he supposed that now was a good time to try to learn. 

The twins were wild little things and fond of climbing. Kelas chased them all over the apartment dragging them down off of furniture, counters, and draperies. He hadn't expected that they would be so energetic and trying to keep track of two of them at once was not doing good things for his anxiety levels. They knocked things over, pulled at his hair, tried to bite himself or each other, and one of them had gone into hiding while the other one had stripped out of his clothing and had urinated on the floor. Kelas was growing more and more certain that he had lost the second one, (and also more certain of the fact that he never wanted to have children of his own.) He scrambled around the apartment searching and at last found the lost yearie hiding behind a loose ceiling tile. He stared up at Larot while the boy chattered meaningless syllables and tried to imagine how in the blasted, blessed, Union, the little thing could've gotten up there.

Once Kelas had gotten him down his head was throbbing, and Gavik was sitting on the floor, splashing in his pee puddle.

“I've no idea how you manage this every day,” Kelas said when Ginel was awake again. He had certainly developed a new respect for her, “especially while breeding. Dear me—and I'm sorry about the drapes, and I don't know where Gavik's clothes are, and I didn't get a chance to clean him--” Kelas wound the fingers of one hand anxiously into his hair, and began to chew one of his claws on the other.

“Kelas, it's okay. They're alive,” Ginel said, hoisting the naked and smelly Gavik onto one of her broad hips, “you'll... you'll still come back, won't you? I hope they didn't scare you away.”

Kelas wanted to say no. He was so wound up that he felt like he was going to gnaw his finger off but how could he say no? His friend needed someone to help her and after all he had made it out of the situation unscathed so it wasn't all bad. He found himself nodding his head and forcing his fingers to unclench around his hair.

“Of course I'll come back,” he said.

Once he was outside he sat down on a bench and had a minor meltdown in which he did indeed chew one of his claws until it was bleeding. He had to force himself to breathe until his chest finally stopped feeling so constricted and it seemed like ages before he had stopped shaking so badly. He recalled his training at the Academy to regain some control over himself and that had helped reduce his anxiety levels down to the normal constant hum that he was more used to dealing with.

“That woman is making you neurotic,” Dara said one night while Kelas stood behind the bar counting the glasses over, and over, and over. 

“I was already neurotic,” he said, “eighteen, nineteen, twenty, twenty-one--”

“There are thirty-one glasses,” Dara said, “including this one that I'm cleaning. You've only counted them a million times.”

“--twenty-four, twenty-five,” Kelas cringed, “thirty-one? No, no, no. That's not okay. It can't be thirty one.”

He snatched one of the glasses from the shelf and held it to his chest.  


“Are you stealing one of my glasses to make the number even?” Dara asked. She finished polishing the one in her hand and placed it down on the bar.

“Yes, I am,” Kelas said, “don't make me give it back. I'll—I'll break it,” he said, squeezing his fingers tightly around it.

Dara sighed.

“Kelas, there is no order to things. I learned to accept this but most Cardassians don't. That's why as a society we're so damn anal about everything. We must keep meticulous track of absolutely everything so that we ensure order. But you, my love, take the cake,” she said, leaning on the counter.

“I don't fit into anywhere. But I can make other things fit,” Kelas said, “there are thirty glasses.”

He scurried away with number thirty-one and hid it away somewhere in the storage room. Dara came in and found him rearranging her kanar bottles.

“What are you doing? They're arranged by vintage,” she said.

“Yes, but they should be arranged alphabetically by maker, and within those groups the various types of kanar should all be together, and then by vintage. How do you find things in here? It's chaos!” his hands trembled over the bottles making them rattle as his claws clinked against the darkly glinting glass.

“I know where everything is back here. Calm down. You're exhausted, and that woman and her little monsters have you more frayed than usual. You need to get some sleep,” she took his hands in hers and Kelas curled his fingers with hers. His hands were just as small and soft as hers despite his hard work at the factory and looking at them made him feel sick and defeated for several reasons. They were not that hands of a man, and they were not doing the work that he wished to do, and his claws were ragged and stumpy to remind him just how worked up he seemed to constantly be as of late.

He drew his hands away and shoved them into the little alcoves of his armpits to hide them.

“I don't like it when you hide yourself,” Dara said quietly, “you've been wearing those baggy old tunics to hide your hips again too. What are you trying to prove by ignoring yourself?”

Kelas shook his head and backed away from her, rounding his shoulders, and dipping his head.

“Nothing, nothing,” he said very softly, “just let me finish arranging the bottles. They're out of place. They're out of place and they need to be—to be—the--the same,” he brought his hands to his face and gripped the delicate ridges along his ears and jawline.

“It's okay not to be the same,” Dara said, tugging his hands away from his ridges. 

Kelas whined and twitched. His eyes were beginning to sting.

“No it isn't—it isn't. Not-the-same is punished. Not-the-same is hurt. No one wants—wants--sss--” Kelas began to curl in on himself and gasp. Dara helped him to the floor where he panted and struggled to breathe for several moments.  


“I think you need to stop helping that woman,” Dara said, “you've been worse since you've been going over there. I know you like to fall over yourself to please people, but this isn't healthy.”

Kelas closed his eyes. He did his best to focus on his breathing and finally got it under control and slowed. He listened to his heart beat hammering away in his ears.

“It's not the yearies,” Kelas said, “I am very tired... but it's more than that. Something is... bothering at all of my insecurities lately. I don't know... why,” he sniffled.

Dara stroked his hair gently. 

“Good things will happen soon,” Dara said, “no one tries harder than you do. Good things will happen soon.”

Dara turned out to be right. On Kelas' next day off he checked his PADD to find a brief letter with a heading that read in a dark purple script: Culat University: Cultivating the greatest minds in the Union. Dread and excitement mingled together in the pit of his stomach—a large part of him was certain that this was a letter of rejection. But then again he wondered if the University would have taken the time to send him a rejection letter at all. 

With trembling fingers he scrolled down to read the message.

_K. Parmak,_

__

_It has come to the attention of the University that you have scored outstanding results on the Mathematics, Medical, and Sciences aptitude survey. Considering the scores of your M.M.S. along with your atypical gender classification, the University has decided that you may possess the ability to excel in our department. You have been accepted for study in the medical field. The Head of Medical Studies will award you special Sponsorship from an anonymous donor so long as your yearly evaluations remain at the highest of standards._

__

_Your student identification code is K-31-P._

__

_Reply immediately to accept your Sponsorship and acquire dorm assignment._

__

_Dr. U. Nevek, Head of Medical Studies_  
_Culat University, Culat City, Seaside_

Kelas dropped his PADD and began to cry.


	3. The Seaside (1)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Credit to the ever wonderful LadyVean for the character 'Zatara' and credit to LadyVean for several of the ideas in this chapter related to pregnancy, nesting, laying, eggs, etc. A lot of the things I mention were ideas of hers or things we came up with together because we love to talk about Cardassian sex and reproduction so there you have it. :)
> 
> And it wouldn't be a chapter of this story w/o my bunches of trigger warnings so here we go: TW: post-traumatic stress, mental illness, sexual themes, reproductive things, um... that might be it for this one. If anyone catches something else I should probably tw feel free to leave it in a comment.
> 
> One last quick note on pronouns--in comments a few of you are referring to Kelas as 'them' which is fine. I just wanted to say that I am not being disrespectful of intersex people by calling Kelas 'he' through the story. The reason for this has to do with how he sees himself or what he prefers and at this point in time he tends to just think of himself as a man with feminine features or he is just generally confused about his gender.

Dara closed the bar for a day so she could go with Kelas to the university and help him get settled. His possessions were quite meager but she made sure he had a bottle of good vintage kanar, and a potted cactus for the barren desk in the corner of the little room that he was to share with the only other male student in the medical program.

“I should have told them I'm homosexual,” Kelas whispered to Dara, hissing the 's' in 'sexual' nervously, “maybe they would have allowed me to live with a woman. But oh—oh, I shouldn't be so ungrateful! I'm so lucky to be here at all—I'm just—worried,” he began to gnaw at one of his stumpy claws.  
“Worried about sharing a room with another man? Why?” Dara patted his back gently.

“Bad experiences and... sexual confusion... oh dear, I'm a mess,” Kelas got up from his bunk and began to pace.

“You're not confused because you like prUt,” Dara narrowed her eyes at him. Kelas waved his free hand at her. His teeth made incessant clicking noises as chewed his nail.

“No, of course not, that is one thing I've found very easy to accept,” Kelas said, “just---never mind, dear. I just hope he's not a brute. And what if I...” Kelas sat down next to her again, and lowered his voice back down to a whisper, “what if I'm attracted to him?”

“I don't know, Kelas. The Union might crumble to dust if that were to happen,” Dara rolled her eyes, “stop gnawing or you won't have any fingers.”

She yanked his hand away from his mouth and held it securely.

“You don't understand, Dara. I crave attention from men and I might get myself into--”

“You'll be fine. Stop worrying for once—look where you are. You're at Culat University and you're officially a medical student. You're about to set out to accomplish your dream. This is good. Stop ruining your own party by worrying that the kanar has gone sour. You'll know if it's soured when you drink it. Until then just let yourself be happy about this,” Dara slid her hand over Kelas' braid. It was getting quite long.

“I am happy. I was so happy when I received that letter, I cried,” he said.

“I didn't cry over mine,” a voice said. Kelas and Dara both turned their heads to observe a handsome young man lounging in the doorway, “but I did have a celebration. It's quite an accomplishment for a man to get into this school.”

The young man pushed himself off of the door frame and sat down on his bunk across from the other two.

“You must be Kelas,” he said.

“That's right, yes. Of course,” Kelas' mouth had already gone dry. His room mate really was quite attractive, “and you are?”

“Crell,” his room mate answered, “you'll only have a year to put up with me, and I probably won't be in much at that. I'm very busy completing the last requirements for my specialization, and I'm working under Doctor Veyal Rugat as a research intern. She's a brilliant woman—foremost exobiologist in the Union. Have you heard of her?”

“Oh! Yes, I have. I've come across her name in some of my studies. What an honor to study under such a revered mentor. Exobiology—is that your specialty, then?” Kelas was full of nervous energy and doing his best to keep from chewing his nails. He stuffed his hand between his thighs to keep them away from his mouth and still from fidgeting. 

Crell gave him a bit of an odd look.

“Yes, it is,” Crell said. Kelas was somewhat relieved that at least his room mate had a very kind voice; not as soft as his own, and certainly with no underlying effeminate tone, but it was still oddly agreeable. “What will yours be?”

“I'm really not certain,” Kelas said, “wouldn't general practice be--”

“Oh, no,” Crell stopped him short, “you'll need to specialize in at least one area, if not more than one. I don't think you understand how competitive this program is. While general practitioners are certainly needed, it wouldn't do for either of us to chose something so... common. As men studying medicine we have more to prove—we're not expected to excel in this area. If you hope to succeed not only at this University, but at being a respected member of the medical community later in life, then you must be ruthless in proving yourself. You must not settle for doing 'well', you must do 'the best' and beyond. You must be ready to step over and onto people to climb this ladder—and beware of those who will try to throw you off. The women in this program tend to be highly competitive and they don't like us stepping on their turf.”

Kelas had shrank in on himself intimidated greatly by Crell's little speech. It was made all the stranger because Crell spoke in such a soothing way as though he was relaying a nursery rhyme instead of something heavier. Crell gave Kelas a warm smile.

“I'm certain you'll do just fine, Kelas,” he said in a placating tone.

“He will,” Dara spoke up, “and if anyone hurts him—including you—you will find yourself at the mercy of these pretty hands,” she clicked her claws at Crell and gave him a dangerous hiss.

“Oh, do you see?” Crell chuckled, “women are quite feisty—even this one. And what do you do, dear? It must be difficult for someone like you to get work. But I do believe you would hurt me—the dregs of society are used to clawing each other blind for a scrap of food. I'm sure you'd find worse to do if I hurt your friend—which I certainly have no intention of doing.”

Dara hissed at him again.

“I like my job,” Dara said, “and I'm not going to indulge you by telling you what it is. But I might be an assassin, so you might want to watch your back.”

Dara turned to Kelas, and patted his head.

“I should go,” she said, “don't let anyone push you around, Kel.”

Kelas began to fuss with his bag after Dara left. He kept his back to Crell and silently counted over the hypo-vials in his typical obsessive manner. Crell was humming snatches of some Cardassian opera behind him and it was throwing off his counting.

“Crell,” Kelas said, turning back to him, and clutching his bag to his chest, “could you show me where the nearest medical replicator is? As a student with special medical needs I was told that I would be allowed free use of them while I am attending the University for my studies. I've been running low without any way to replenish my stock and I need to get back to taking these regularly so that I don't get too ill.”

“Of course,” Crell said.

He lead Kelas out of their room and slid his arm companionably around the other resting his hand gently at the base of Kelas' spine.

“Do you like music, Kelas? Lately when I have any spare time I've been reading an interesting book that goes into great depth comparing and contrasting the works of Morat and Vokel. Are you familiar?”

They chatted about music while Crell showed Kelas around campus. It was a beautiful sprawling example of more modern Cardassian architecture. There was something less harsh about it than the design of the factories that had jutting parts that scraped against the sky like claws. Yet it was still distinctly Cardassian. The center of campus was open and there was a garden the likes of which Kelas had never seen. It was full of ferns and fat, squat, plants with enormous vibrant green leaves speckled pink. There were young trees with purple mekla vines weaving around the fleshy trunks and hanging down like curtains from the branches. There were succulents of all shapes and sizes protected with spikes, and needles, and dangerous glistening blades, yet many of them were crowned at their tops with beautiful blooming flowers of all variety of color. Kelas sipped the air and hummed his pleasure at the sweet perfume.

“The gardens are lovely, aren't they?” Crell said, “many of the plants that are grown here are known for their medicinal properties. Though some of them really are just for show.”

“What are these?” Kelas asked, stooping to slide his finger over a velvety looking petal.

“Edosian orchids, I believe,” Crell said, “they're poisonous.”

Kelas snatched his hand away from the bloom.

“Oh, but they're so lovely,” he said.

“As are many things that are dangerous,” Crell said.

When he was finished showing Kelas around the campus they ended up at the clinic. Kelas punched his student identification number into one of the replicators. This would give him authorization to replicate certain amounts of his medications. He was so relieved to have reliable access to them that he had almost began to pet the replicator lovingly. But he remembered that Crell was hovering nearby so he decided against displaying his affections for the lovely machine.

When they returned to their room Crell put on a symphony by Morat and Kelas lay on his cot studying to get ahead of his classes which he would begin the next day. He found the classes challenging and the schedule was grueling even for a first year student starting out on his general science, math, and medical studies. But he felt more like himself having plenty of things to flex his mind around and the factory on the dock was far behind him. He did manage to keep his visits with Ginel once a week to look after her yearies and her belly kept growing bigger, and bigger. Being in her home still riled his nerves something terrible but he had not placed his finger on exactly why that was. He was beginning to assume that he just didn't like children. He had never been much of a child himself so he had very little perspective from which to relate.

But then one day he came across a child scrounging in the alley between two campus buildings. She was a tiny, pale, little thing—an albino just like Dara—and that had reminded Kelas that it had been quite awhile since he had paid his dear friend a visit. The girl was clearly an orphan given the state of her clothing, the smears of dirt and old dried blood on her face, and the great tangled mass of dirty white hair. Her eyes flashed at him like feral things as he moved cautiously towards her.

“You've found a kanar bottle,” Kelas said genty, “that wouldn't be very good for you to drink.”

“Mine!” the girl spat, and held the bottle protectively to her chest.

“Ah... you're thirsty, aren't you? Are you hungry too?” he asked her in his softest voice. He crouched down to get closer to her level and rounded his shoulders in a non-threatening posture. The girl nodded her head eagerly.

“Always hungry,” she said, “you gots food?”

“If you give me that bottle I will share my lunch with you,” he said.

The girl tilted her head and regarded him like a fearful little animal. She stood there growling at him for some time then finally handed the bottle over to him. Kelas coughed—he could smell that the kanar inside was sour.

“Come with me,” he said, “we'll find a recycling port for this dirty old thing, and we'll get you some real food.”

He offered his hand to her but the girl shook her head refusing to take it. She scampered along behind him as he moved across campus towards the food court.

Kelas' favorite area to eat on campus was a simple replimat but it was situated on the beach and overlooked the sea. If one arrived during a slower time it was entirely possible to find a seat on the upper deck and one could sit in the sun and sip the sea-salted air while enjoying their food. Kelas was delighted upon finding a free table on the deck and he pulled out a chair for the girl who climbed into it awkwardly and sat up on her knees. She wasn't a yearie but she couldn't have been much older, he thought. He sat down the lunch he had replicated for himself. The girl licked her lips eagerly and snatched a sliced root vegetable right off of his plate.

“I did say I was going to share,” he reminded her, as she grabbed at his flatbread. He let her take the entire thing and watched as she crammed food into her mouth filling her little cheeks until they were pouching out. “You'll choke!” he warned her, “I won't take your food away—be careful. You'll make yourself sick eating like that,” he fussed.

He reached for a vegetable stick but the girl leaned over the table and hissed at him spraying spit-dampened crumbs all over Kelas and the table.

“Alright, have as much as you like, and I'll finish the rest,” he said, sitting back in his chair to try and remind her that he wasn't a threat to her. “What is your name, little one?”

She said something muffled while still shoving food into her mouth so Kelas thought it better not to ask questions until she was finished.

At last he was looking down at his empty plate. He had replicated generous portions and the tiny child had eaten it all up.

“More?” she asked.

“More? Goddess! Where would you put it?” Kelas asked.

She actually giggled, and leaned back in her chair, rubbing her little hands over her distended belly.

“Gots to eat all the food if I find it,” she said, “more?”

“This is enough. You'll be sick,” he said, “why don't you tell me your name, dear one?”

The girl gave a sigh and tried to tug her too-small tunic down over her belly. She grunted and tugged and managed to do it but one of the seams split and she screamed.

“Oh, dear!” Kelas startled at her high pitched screech, “it's okay—sometimes clothing isn't very sturdy, is it?”

She began to chew at her collar. 

“I could... I could get a new tunic for you. Would you like that?” he asked. He knew he should be saving his replicator credits and couldn't really afford to be spending them feeding and clothing every orphan running the streets of Culat—which was a lot—but he couldn't just let her go back to the street in a shirt that was little more than rags. The seams on one of her arms was split too, and the entire thing was filthy, and ragged, and pulling too tightly across her chest. 

“Yes! I--” she interrupted her own sentence with a belch that was so loud it seemed impossible to have come from something so small. She began to giggle.

“Now your shirt really is going to split off of you if you do that again!” he teased her.

Returning to the lower level of the replimat Kelas took her to one of the replicators to get her shirt. Seeing that people were getting food out of the others she began to bang on the touchpad.

“More food!” she cried.

With lightening quick reflexes she grabbed a sweet roll someone had just ordered from the replicator next to theirs. It had only just materialized when she snatched it and shoved most of it into her mouth all at once.

“Get that orphan out of here,” the woman hissed at Kelas, “you can't feed them. They'll all start coming around here for handouts and stealing things and we'll be infested.”

“It was only once,” he assured her as he punched a code into the replicator for a child-sized tunic, a pair of stretchy leggings, and simple sandals. 

The girl swallowed the last bit of her roll and began to lap at her sticky fingers. Kelas knelt with the clothing in his arms.

“I have some things for you,” he said gently, “but will you tell me your name first?”

“Z'tara,” the girl said. She scratched at her hair further tangling it. Kelas could see the sandfleas hopping and he could only imagine how uncomfortable those must be in her scales, especially when it was shedding time.

“Zatara,” Kelas said, “what a lovely name.”

“She's an albino. Don't tell her she's lovely,” spat the woman from the neighboring replicator. She had a new sweet roll and was hovering nearby eating it while Zatara looked up at it longingly.

Kelas bristled at the woman's insult against albinos. While it was not uncommon at all it rubbed him the wrong way especially since he had a dear friend who was an albino too. 

“Mine?” Zatara asked, tugging at the fabric in Kelas' arms.

“Yes, do you need help, dear?”

“Yes,” Zatara said, tugging at her tunic.

Kelas helped her out of her clothing. The pants smelled terribly and were beginning to rot off of her. It didn't feel right to give her a nice set of clean, new, clothing while she was still so dirty and scratching her fleas with ragged little claws. But he couldn't clean her up right now—he was risking making himself late to his next class as it was and Nevek had made it clear to him how important it was to keep up with his studies. It hurt him a great deal to have to abandon her this way for his class though and he thought it was a terrible conflict of interest. He helped her into her new clothing and strapped her sandals onto her filthy little feet. They were coated black with grime. He was pleased at least that the leggings were stretchy so they'd probably last her for a good long while, and the tunic was a few sizes too large for her: it was more like a baggy dress. She would be able to grow into them and they would probably last her a long time given that her growth would probably be limited anyway based on her poor nutrition and lack of adequate food sources. 

Kelas sighed.

“You're an idiot, you know,” said the hovering woman, “it's not our job to take care of the cast-offs.”

Kelas straightened and squared his shoulders at this woman.

“Are you here to study medicine?” he asked her, as Zatara scampered away.

“I am,” the woman said, tipping her chin up at Kelas, and moving into his space, crowding him. He took a few steps back and pressed himself up against the replicator. He thought about dropping this conversation with the way she was intimidating him. He took a few deep breaths and licked his lips before getting up the nerve to continue.

“Well—so am I. I want to be a doctor. I believe people should be helped regardless of their status. Especially children. It isn't the fault of the orphans that they're on the streets, now is it? I apologize that I just don't have it in me to be as heartless as our society mandates,” he said.

The woman just shook her head at him.

“You're never going to make it,” she said, “you don't survive on Cardassia by being kind.”

She turned away from him and left him smoothing his hands over his tunic. He glanced around for Zatara but she seemed to have vanished.

Kelas watched for her when he was out and about on campus and sometimes he would find her in the alley where he'd first noticed her. He always had some bit of food to give to her, and she always followed him around for awhile, staying a cautious distance behind and asking for more. After not having seen her for an entire week Kelas had assumed that she had moved on to somewhere else—and that was hoping for the best. It had brightened his moments to help her and though she'd never really warmed to him or said much more than asking for food, it had meant something to him and he'd started to worry about her sometimes when the nights grew colder. Sometimes he would be stopped by other orphans too and he wanted to help them all but at this rate he would be out of credits for himself and he'd starve unless he could bum food from Crell or Dara. His kindness had not gone unnoticed, however, and signs began to crop up all over campus warning students and faculty NOT to feed the orphans under penalty to be decided upon by the University president. 

Kelas continued to look after Ginel's yearlings too though spending time with them had not been the same as the limited interactions he had had with Zatara—the twins were far more demanding—and yet one thing remained the same: he could not say no. Given how much time he was spending with children he was beginning to consider that he might specialize in pediatrics. 

One day he was hanging around Ginel's apartment after classes and something very rare had happened. Gavik and Larot had worn themselves out enough that they'd fallen asleep for naps. Gavik was curled up in a windowsill snoozing in a warm beam of sun. His brother was snoring on top of a warming unit. Ginel herself was fast asleep on the sofa. She was near to her laying time and was sleeping more, and more, and she slept so deeply that she wouldn't even stir while the children were screaming, which made Kelas extremely anxious about leaving her alone with them.

But now it was odd to be in the apartment while it was actually quiet. It seemed like some sort of anomaly that just shouldn't be. The children had gotten him so on edge before they had passed out, however, that he was convinced he could at least hear the jangling of his own nerves in the silence. Kelas chewed his claws and rocked on his feet, attempting to enjoy the silence for a moment. When that didn't work he busied himself cleaning. The apartment was tiny, and shabby, and it was always a mess from the boys. Kelas hated mess and he found it more productive to occupy his hands with tidying up and cleaning rather than chewing so he got to work.

Putting things into order usually soothed him and yet at this place he never could seem to find his calm. He had yet to put his finger on what it was that made him so uncomfortable—it wasn't the children, the noise, or even the clutter—there was something else beneath it all like an undercurrent that kept slithering around him but wouldn't come close enough for him to figure it out.

After he'd made a significant dent in the clutter, specifically to the counter top, he began to search for a cleaning solution. Some people did keep personal replicators in their homes but there weren't any installed into these slummy apartments and it was unlikely that Ginel and her husband could afford a portable one. This section of Culat belonged mostly to the service-drones and none of them were paid much more than what it took to survive, and depending upon how large ones family was, it could amount to even less than that. It made Kelas even more gracious for his dorm room even if he was sharing it with a handsome room mate who was most unfortunately straight. 

“Ah ha!” Kelas felt victorious when he had located a bottle of cleaner. He was ready to open it and pour some onto a cloth to wipe down—well--everything--when something eerie clicked in his mind. He sat the unopened bottle aside. He felt an overwhelming need to sip the air. To really scent it and dissect it before the chemical stink of the cleaner was unleashed to cloud over the other smells.

He closed his eyes and drew air in through his mouth and nose letting it sift slowly over his senses. Of course he could scent Ginel, and the twins, and there was the scent of something rotting. One of the children had probably hidden food somewhere and it was decaying. But none of those things helped him and he could sense something else but it was as though there was some sort of wall blocking out what this other scent was. Kelas found that very odd since he'd always had a great sense of smell.

He moved about the apartment on silent feet so as not to wake the boys and he began to scent the air in different areas.

At last he came to the door that marked the bedroom that Ginel and her husband had shared. A shiver traced down his spine and he wasn't certain why. It occurred to him that he'd never asked Ginel much about her bondmate, and she had never volunteered much information. She'd never even mentioned his name, or if she had...

Kelas began to chew on his claws again.

It would be rude to sneak into someone's bedroom but he needed to do it. The thought was already in his head and now it would be stuck there spiraling and clawing and keeping him awake at night until he gave into it. 

He slid the door back slowly into the wall pocket and stepped into the room. It was small and there wasn't much else in there but a bed, and a little table with clothing folded on top of it, and boots stashed beneath. Here the mysterious scent was stronger though and still that wall was down and it would not allow Kelas to process the scent.

Kelas moved towards the bed. He felt almost numb as he slid his fingers over one of the blankets and sipped the air again. A strange combination of arousal and fear twisted deep in his belly and his breath caught in his throat on a little gasp. Ginel had said the name of her bondmate and he had blanked it out. His scent was lingering in the bedroom and Kelas knew it.

 _“Can I touch it? Can I sssuck it for you?”_

_“We don't have time to drag this out. Someone could come in at any moment.”_

Kelas pressed his hand to the front of his pants embarrassed that his slit was growing wet despite the fear and panic coursing through him as images flashed through his mind—spreading his legs, the grit of the dirty bathroom floor beneath his palms, the heel of a boot snapping his ribs, the way his face had looked smeared and distorted in the reflection on the sonic wash station--

_“Good girl.” ___

“Prelat...” Kelas hissed. He backed away from the bed until the backs of his thighs bumped the table and knocked a pile of folded clothing onto the floor. 

The compulsion to fix the mess was at war with his instinct to flee the danger, and then there was something worse rolling around behind both of those things, something hot and throbbing deep down that was supplying Kelas with the desire to climb right into Prelat's bed and hump his pillow while he re-imagined the memory of the attack into a different scene where Prelat had fucked him beautifully senseless instead of turning on him and beating him for surprising him with a prUt. Kelas raked his claws in agitation at his flushed neck ridges and dropped to his knees to began fumbling with the toppled laundry.

“Gray, brown, brown, black,” he worked to distract himself by repeating the colors of each piece of clothing he folded with his trembling hands, “swamp green—just like those terrible uniforms--” 

One dug his fingers into Kelas' slit and forced it open. Three with his powerful arms held Kelas still against his broad chest while--

“Black, gray, blue—how lovely--”

\--One mocked him for the size of his prUt and kept rubbing it roughly until--

“Wrinkled. Messy. Again—gray, brown, brown, black--”

\--Kelas came while Prelat was shoving his face into a pillow, bearing down with all of his weight so Kelas could not move, fucking him until it hurt badly enough to feel good--

“Stop it!” Kelas cried out. He pressed his palms to his ears and began to rock himself over the pile of half-folded clothing, “Gray, brown, brown, black, swamp, black, gray, blue. Gray, brown, brown, black, sss-swamp--”

“Kelas?”

He could barely hear the sleepy voice over the sound of his pounding heart and his chanted colors. 

“What is it—black, gray, blue—dear?” Kelas managed to force the question out around his chanting but then it only messed things up and further upset him. 

“Kelas, what's the matter? I—oh!” Ginel gave a little cry of pain that drew him closer to the surface and further away from the racing thoughts and confusing memories.

“Ginel?”

“It's nothing, Kelas. I've been having spasms all morning and I need to nest—I wish I could a dig. I want to dig so badly. I didn't mention it earlier because I didn't want to worry you. My midwife should've been here by now but I just got a message from her saying that her transport from across city has been delayed. I don't think I can hold off much longer and I don't want to risk becoming egg-bound. Could you... could you help me?”

“Me?” Kelas squawked. He was still coming down off of his strange post-traumatic haze and he wasn't certain his nerves could take much more, “but I—but I--”

“You're a medical student,” Ginel said.

“I've only been studying for a short period of time, and the basics at that! Oh, Ginel, I couldn't. I'll call emergency services,” he said.

“No, not that. They'll take me to a birthing center and I don't want that. I want to lay at home like I did all the others. I'm so tired, and I don't want to go anywhere, and this is my turf—I don't want to be moved!” Ginel was becoming agitated.

Kelas got to his feet. 

“Alright, I don't know exactly what to do, but you've laid twice before so... so at least you have some idea...” he said.

“I want to dig,” Ginel repeated as Kelas approached her. She gripped his tunic in her clawed hands as though she was going to shred it off of him.

“If we had time and you were willing to go I would transport you to the beach for that, but we don't, and you aren't, and the boys--” he was following Ginel into the main room of the apartment and he paused to glance around and make sure the twins were still sleeping. Luckily they were. “I have an idea. Come back into the bedroom,” Kelas said.

Ginel was pacing around and she began to claw at the sofa.

“In here,” Kelas prompted her, though the bedroom with it's Prelat-scent so strong was the last place he really wanted to be. There was something greater at work than his own twisted memories though and Ginel needed him to settle himself and help her through this.

Kelas yanked the blanket and pillows from the bed and tossed them onto the floor with the laundry he'd been folding. He grabbed the other piles that had still been neatly placed onto the table and tossed them down too.

“There you are—nest in that,” he said.

He helped Ginel down to the floor and she began to claw at the pile of fabric and arrange things until it seemed to suit her. She stripped out of her dress and settled that into the makeshift nest too and sat up on her hands and knees rocking a bit.

“This is... better,” she said, “Kelas, make sure the egg has shifted,” she said.

“Ah... how do I?” It was finally sinking in that he was going to have to help her lay rather than just standing back and encouraging her while she did it all on her own. He took a deep breath. He knew enough about anatomy to understand what needed to be done, it was just the sudden onset of the moment that was catching him off guard.

“You'll have to put your hand into my ajan. The mucus plug hasn't dislodged yet. You can take it out for me. It'll be messy. Then feel around in there and let me know if the egg is—”

“It needs to be facing the right way,” Kelas finished for her, “not to the side, and preferably not to the thicker bottom side either, but to the top where the head would be. The egg is narrower there and it'll lay more easily.”

“Yes, now do it,” Ginel said, “I want this egg out of me,” she spread her legs wide for him.

Kelas left her briefly much to her grumbling but it was important he clean his hands before putting one of them into her ajan. He didn't have to be far along in his studies to know that much. He did have to force himself not to wash them several times over to satisfy his own compulsions. He hurried back into the bedroom and settled down behind her on his knees.

“It's a very nice laundry nest, isn't it, Kelas?” Ginel panted.

“Lovely,” Kelas said, “you're—you're doing a beautiful job,” he said, as he eased one of his hands into her ajan. He surprised himself by settling into the breathing tactics he had learned at the Academy as if by instinct, and the calm that washed over him was something new, and so steadying that he almost felt like another person. 

He felt what must have been the mucus plug inside of Ginel and pulled it out. A gush of liquid lubricant soaked Ginel's thighs, Kelas' hand, and the nest. He dropped the mucus plug and slid his hand in again. This time it went in quite easily. He had to push a littler further to feel for the egg but there it was.

“I'm not certain... the part that's pressing up against your entrance doesn't feel very narrow at all. I think the egg might be turned,” Kelas said.

“One of the twins was,” Ginel said, “both hands, Kelas. Just get in there and turn it. Then I can start pushing.”

“I wouldn't know, but I suspect this might hurt a bit--”

“It's going to hurt when the egg comes out anyway. Don't worry about it—things will stretch. It's more important the egg is turned,” Ginel said.

“Right, of course,” Kelas worked his other hand into her carefully. He paused when she tensed up, “you're holding your breath and tensing—you have to be more relaxed or this won't work. Do you feel my breathing? Breathe with me.”

He waited until Ginel's breaths had synced with his own and he felt her body relax again. Finally both hands were inside and he could work to turn the egg for her.

“Good, very good--”

“Oooh, Kelas it hurts—not you, you're very gentle—the spasms,” Ginel said.

Speaking was throwing off her breathing again and he could feel her growing tight once more.

“Shh, think about breathing. Count for me between breaths. I like very much to count things,” Kelas said.

Ginel did as he asked and she eased up again while he finished positioning the egg. He'd never done this of course and he hadn't even studied it much but he could feel the narrow end of the egg once it was turned.

“There it is!” he slid his hands out of her and rubbed her back gently, “alright... do you think you're ready?”

“Yes,” Ginel said.

She began to bear down and push. Kelas kept reminding her about her breathing and encouraged her to keep going until he could see the egg crowning.

“Oh! Oh! There it is! Another good strong push and--” the egg was birthed into the laundry nest.

Kelas did know about the reaction that fell upon mothers just after laying so he scooted himself out of the nest quickly to get out of Ginel's way. She curled up with the egg clutched to her belly right away and the haze clouded her eyes and she gave off a low, menacing, growl. Kelas stayed far enough away, crouched down to make himself as small and non-threatening as possible. No one was ever to take an egg away from its mother directly after laying when this feral state came upon her if one wished to keep ones body intact.

Kelas did not dare to move. He sat there crouched with his calves beginning to ache and watched Ginel guard her egg and slide her hands over the thick mucus membrane to wipe it clean. Now and then she would shift enough that Kelas could really catch a good glimpse of the egg—it was translucent and in those moments he could see the form of the little hatchie inside of it. It was an amazing thing.

When Ginel caught him gazing at it in wonder for too long she began to pile clothing over it to hide it further. Kelas thought that was probably a good idea anyway. It would help to keep the egg warmer.

Now and then he would glance towards the door hoping the twins wouldn't run in and disturb them. He wasn't certain if Ginel would even attack the other offspring in her haze or not but he didn't want to find out. Glancing towards the window he could see that the sky was growing pink and the shadows were coming. Prelat would soon be home from his shift at the docks and Kelas hoped that Ginel was out of her haze before then so he could slip out before the brute returned. 

Just when he was really beginning to get worried Ginel's growling died down and her eyes cleared. For a moment she seemed confused but then she realized she was holding her egg under a pile of clothing and gave Kelas a big smile.

“Oh—we did it!” she said, carefully pulling back a layer of clothing, “come and see, Kelas.”

Kelas crawled towards the nest and had a close-up peek at the egg. The hatchling inside was curled up with its little fists balled up and held close to its chest. The face was visible but behind the the thick murky membrane the detailing couldn't be made out. Still, it was an amazing thing.

“You were so good to me, Kelas,” Ginel said, “you helped me as though all that had come naturally to you. It isn't everyone who has the gift of being able to put a laying woman at ease. Maybe you should go into obstetrics.” 

“Perhaps,” Kelas said, “it was a wonderful experience... I even surprised myself. But I... I really should go, dear.”

For a moment he considered telling her about what Prelat had done to him. Part of him wanted desperately to get it off of his chest, yet it felt like a selfish thing to do; to tell Ginel that her husband had attacked him and risk damaging something between them. Besides, Ginel was cuddling her egg and cooing at it. She was so happy and it wouldn't do for him to ruin her wonderful moment by unburdening himself.

He retrieved the twins from their sleeping spots and settled them into the nest with mother and new egg before leaving them. As he walked to the transport stop a strong feeling had come over him that he probably wouldn't visit Ginel and her children now that the she had laid the new egg—and now that he knew about Prelat. He wasn't sure if that was fair to them, or if it was the moral thing to do; to abandon them when they needed someone to help them simply because he could not endure the scent of the man who lived there.

He spent a little while waiting for the transport and worrying over his decision. In the end Prelat crowded into his mind again, and along with him One, and Three, and the strange combination of feelings and desires that came along with them when the settled in to torment him.

Instead of taking the transport back to the university Kelas left his post before it had even arrived and walked along the boulevard towards an area known for its clubs and nightlife. It wasn't uncommon for a large portion of the population to prefer living a nocturnal life and so there were always places open at night and plenty of interesting things to get caught up in when it grew dark and cool. Being a very introverted person Kelas hadn't considered scoping out one of these clubs before. But he was tired of fighting with his desires, and recreating the things he needed on his own—that just wasn't the same at all—and his cravings for touch, attention, and sex, could not begin to be satisfied by any amount of masturbation. 

He spent a little while half-hiding in shadowed alleys and just watching the type of people who went into and out of some of the clubs. It was dangerous for him to do so and he knew it but putting himself in that danger zone only intensified the fear-arousal response and he was certain that he could not send himself home until he had found someone who would fuck him so good and so hard that he would ache with pain and pleasure and all the tight little springs in his body would just unwind and let go at the mercy of a thick prUt and powerful hands.

Once Kelas had settled on one of the clubs, one that seemed only to be allowing men, he stepped out of the shadows and made his way to back of the line that wove away from the entrance like a little tail. As the line began to move he started to tremble with fear. He had never been to such a place or put himself in this type of position before and the panic was rising. What would he say? What would he do? How would he initiate? And what if he just wasn't wanted? He wasn't wearing one of his outfits that hid his body structure. It was possible the bouncers at the door would mistake him for a woman and not let him in at all. He wrung his hands as he waited in line but once he was at the door he was let through without question.

The first thing Kelas did when he was inside was to scent the air. It was practically throbbing with male pheromones and the smell of sex was so strong he could almost feel it curling around him. He was keeping to the outer walls but some men had already caught sight of him and seemed to be trying to figure out what to make of him, raking their gaze up and down him, and making judgments before turning away and ambling on with their bottles of kanar clutched in their hands. 

Kelas hung around the club for hours wishing desperately to be taken into one of the private rooms and fucked but he was too out of place and too full of anxiety to even approach anyone. A number of people had stopped to look him over, even to chat, and banter a bit, but nothing had ended up crossing over into the realm of 'sexual' and it was upsetting to think that he just wasn't attractive the way that he was. He began to feel self conscious over his hips and tried to tug his tunic further down, or to find an empty chair so he could sit, which he thought might hide the little curves a bit better. His hair was long too and he began to wonder if that was off-putting. He sat at the bar and played with the ends of his braid. His hair was one thing he actually liked about himself though and certainly there was someone lurking around the club who would like nice, long, locks to pull. He slid the tie off the end of his braid and wrapped it around his wrist and then unwound his hair so it hung freely around his shoulders. The braid left it cascading in beautiful waves when it was undone and his streak of silver was eye-catching in the low lighting.

Feeling a bit more confident he began to try harder at flirting outright instead of waiting for someone to approach him. But he quickly found that he wasn't doing it right—his social inadequacies were cropping up again. He was being far too forward rather than playing the more subtle game of flirting with insults and arguments. A sexy pose would lure someone over but blurting out 'do you want to fuck me?' put an end to the adventure before it had even began.

Kelas finally had to admit that the night was a bust. He returned home to his dorm so late that Crell, who was known for keeping late hours, was already sleeping. Kelas crawled into bed but he was too wound up to sleep and spent several hours hidden beneath his blankets biting himself and playing roughly with his slit, prUt, and ass, until he could get rid of at least a portion of the frustration.

True to form the club became one of his obsessive routines. He had tried to be reasonable at first and limit his visits to two nights per week. But he still hadn't been fucked yet and the desperation was growing. So soon he was visiting almost every night and throwing himself at as many men as he could. Finally one night he was taken into one of the alley's instead of one of the nice private rooms—they were all filled and he had made it clear that he didn't want to wait—and was fucked senseless up against the side of the building in piles of trash. It was rough, and dirty, and perfect. His claws caught and broke as they scraped against the building and his hole hurt from being filled with such a large prUt for the first time but he asked for no mercy from the big man who pinned his wrists and fucked two orgasms out of him. 

Kelas wiggled and turned around to face the big man which made his bottom smear against the splotches of his own come that was dripping down the wall.

“Fuck me again, please,” Kelas begged in a small, breathy, voice, “you can fuck me in my slit—I like when it hurts there—please, sir,” he spread his legs eagerly and dipped his head in a submissive bow.

“It's late,” the claimer of his virginity said gruffly, “best be getting home. Maybe next time—you gotta nice little hole.”

The compliment made his knees feel weak and he leaned against the wall for support while the other man left him there. Kelas closed his eyes and just enjoyed the feeling of being used hard and the sound of those words spinning around his head and clicking into places that made him feel good in ways that weren't just physical. _You gotta nice little hole_ , he thought to himself. Immediately he knew that he would do just about anything to get another compliment like that.

Soon Kelas had become a regular at the club and though things had started off slowly for him he soon found himself with more prUt than he could keep track of. He was eager to please, open to trying just about anything, and he seemed to be incapable of saying 'no'. If someone at the club was in need of a good submissive they would seek him out. If someone wanted something disgusting it was well known that Kelas would likely agree to do it. He reveled in lending his ass out until it felt numb from the fucking, sucking down as many prUts as he could, and being covered in come or filling his belly with it. Most of all he loved it when men were forceful with him, when they marked him like he belonged to someone and left him covered in bites and bruises, when they fucked him so hard it felt like his spine had gone out of alignment, when they found new ways to tie him and restrain him—nothing had ever felt so good as to please these men and earn their praise once they were finished.

His pleasures left him exhausted, aching, and sore in private places but every bit of it seemed worth it.

When he came home and Crell wrinkled his nose at him, commenting about the ridiculous hour, and how he reeked of sex, Kelas loved it. It didn't matter that it was said with disgust. Somehow it felt like approval and never in his life had he felt so wanted and desirable. He was still a very timid person but it was obvious that he was growing far more confident with his body and embracing the way that he looked. 

When he finally got around to visiting Dara again she said that he looked well. But their conversation was cut short when a frequent visitor to the club came in to Dara's bar, and Kelas went over to greet him eagerly. Kelas had let himself and this man into the storage room while Dara had been busy with customers, and she had not been pleased when she had walked in on Kelas being choked and fucked over a barrel of cactus ale. 

“You know,” Crell said to Kelas one night, as Kelas lay naked on his bed studying one of his PADDs. He was covered in all sorts of marks, some of them new, some of them fading, “I think it would be quite interesting to do a study on you.”

“Me?” Kelas asked, pausing in his studies and tilting his head to the side, “whatever for?”

“You're fascinating. By day you're a mild-mannered medical student whose kind nature has gotten him into trouble for feeding the orphans. By night you're wild and seem to have the self-control of a bitch riding hound in heat.”

Kelas gave Crell a little smirk at that. Rather than take it as an insult he enjoyed the comparison.

“I do have a very demanding sex drive,” Kelas said, “I love sex very much. If you're trying to shame me for it you're not succeeding.”

“Cardassians are known for that, but you're... beyond what is normal, I think,” Crell said.

“My dear, I have never been normal a day in my life. For the first time I am enjoying that about myself,” Kelas said.

“You're damaged, aren't you? You think you're something special, but you're not. I've studied enough psychology to see your madness for what it is—you're only reacting to some sort of trauma. You're trying to build yourself up as someone who is highly desirable—which you equate with having your brains fucked out on a regular basis. Pardon my crude language here. But really it's quite pathetic. You're not special. You're not even wanted; not really. You're just broken and allowing people to take advantage of your weakness,” Crell said, “you should study some psychology yourself. It might do wonders to hold a mirror up to yourself.”

“What does it matter to you who I let fuck me, or how often? You may be right that I am very inclined towards pleasing other people... but I don't care about pleasing you. I don't care that you're disgusted with me either. I can hear it in your voice and see it in the way you wrinkle your nose at me. I don't care. I am disgusting, my dear, as often as I can be and I like it. I—I don't make a point of standing up for myself often because it feels... out of sync with my nature but... don't drag me down simply because you disapprove of what I do in my free time. It is _my_ time, after all. If we're going to start growling at each other about what we hate about the other, then I might tell you that I despise how you bring little animals into our dorm and experiment on them. The things you do to them just to see what will happen—now who is more disgusting? You're inflicting pain for the sake of nothing, really, and I'm bringing pleasure to myself and to others for—well, because it feels damn good. Why don't you hold up a mirror, Crell Moset.”

Kelas surprised himself with his little rant. He hadn't raised his voice, or hissed, or snarled, but still that was a lot coming from him. He pressed his delicate fingers to his lips as an afterthought, as though he had remembered that he never said these kinds of things, never risked speaking up and offending someone else by being so bold. 

“Spin it how you will,” Crell said, “in true Cardassian fashion anything can look good, or bad, depending upon what light you place it under... and depending upon what 'good' and 'bad' even are, if they are really anything at all.”

“Out of the two of us I think it's your morals, not mine, that are more likely to welcome trouble,” Kelas said.

“Morals? How would we even begin to discuss and compare such things? Morals are completely subjective,” Crell said, “computer... play Izet's Composition Number 5.”

The conversation seemed to be over once Crell had called for his music. If there was one thing they could agree on it was that. 

Kelas went back to his studies and allowed the music to flow over him. After a few moments afterthought about everything he'd said enough time had set in that his submissive nature was planting an edge of guilt around his words and pushing him to consider apologizing to Crell for having been so 'harsh'. What Kelas considered as himself being harsh was probably really nothing and Crell would probably laugh at him. But just as he was really considering to say something the music swelled to a crescendo and Kelas swallowed the apology down.

If Izet didn't want him to undermine his little moment of confidence then he wouldn't.


	4. The Desert Revisited

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is probably the most depressing thing I have ever written. It's also probably kind of all over the place. You'd probably be better off if you didn't read it tbh.

The soft leather straps creaked minutely as Kelas shifted his arms. They didn't hurt at all, they were just tight enough to keep him secured to the metallic plate on the floor. His arms were bound above his head, bent at the elbows, his silver-streaked hair splayed wildly beneath them. A harness crisscrossed his narrow chest and along the straps that curved down his sides were metal rings that had been secured and clasped to the plate. His legs were bound too, curled up in a rather impressive display of flexibility for a Cardassian. The muscles ached and Kelas knew they would hurt him later but from the moment he had first been restrained in the club he knew that is was something he would crave over, and over, again. It reminded him of when the boys at the Academy had held him, made him vulnerable, and unable to escape, but under the hands that met him here, men who claimed him with his consent, he simply felt secure when the straps, scarves, ropes, chains, and clasps, kept him still and ready to be used. 

When Kelas was restrained and kept still it felt like order imposed over chaos. He could focus in on the way it felt and the anxieties and compulsions that kept his mind spinning and his nerves rattling seemed to fall away until there was nothing but the sounds of men moving around him, the feeling of the restraints, the sting of a crop tonight biting the soft parts of his skin and leaving marks that Kelas could touch and trace later in private to relieve the scene.

Humiliation did nothing for him, but if his partners wanted to do it, he allowed it. There was little he refused to do. Pleasing the men who enjoyed him seemed fulfilling in ways he could not explain—gaining their attention seemed mandatory. He needed to be touched, roughly, filled and pounded, pulled on and spanked, sprayed with seed and tasting it. 

Kelas let out a little whine as the crop struck him again on the sensitive skin of his inner thigh. He was blindfolded so he couldn't watch to see who was wielding it, or where it might catch him next. He could smell at least four men in the room with him as he sipped the air. Was just one of them striking him while the other three watched? Were they all taking turns? He didn't know. Not knowing made it better, somehow. But he was growing anxious waiting to feel someone's big prUt inside of him, or in his mouth, or pressed up wetly against his skin. 

He gasped when he felt the head of the crop trace along his wet slit, and then suddenly the touch was gone, and it came down with a snap and a bright sting on his belly just above his chuva. Kelas cried out again, thrashing his head from side to side with pleasure. He heard someone hiss that he was beautiful, someone else growling that he was going to be good now, and take a nice big prUt. Hearing that he was 'beautiful' or 'good' made him feel good beyond physical pleasure sometimes, and there were moments when he craved the praise almost over any other aspect of these 'games', and reveled in the sounds of them sliding from lips and tongues. Yet other times the words would do little for him. Sometimes he tried to place the words outside of his mind, preferring to ignore them, rather than to claim them as something he did not always feel deserving of. But he tried to wiggle his hips a bit to invite whoever wanted to penetrate him. But instead the wetly lubricated head nudged at his lips. Kelas opened his mouth for it without prompting. It seemed almost impossibly large as it forced its way into his mouth and down his throat. But it was not unwelcome. 

“Where is your prUt?” he heard someone say, and Kelas moaned around the thick flesh in his mouth when he felt fingers at his slit. His lubricants were leaking from his swollen genital slit but his prUt had yet to evert. “Is it too small to open you?”

The fingers were pressing into muscles and nudging his slit in a way that made it open without his prUt spreading it. Waves of pleasure buzzed through Kelas. It reminded him again of what had been done to him in the past, someone forcing him open, but these touches were more gentle. He didn't want them to be gentle.

“Harder,” Kelas said, “hurt my slit--” there was laughter as his words were cut off by the thick prUt being shoved into his mouth again.

“You don't demand of your captors,” a gruff voice said, and the fingers that had been probing curiously at the slick flesh inside his slit withdrew. It was torment—but it was also good. He felt so swollen and ready inside, eager to feel his prUt pushing out, so it could get some attention, but it was stubborn and it just usually wouldn't emerge for him without the painful coaxing he had grown used to from his past experiences and his own play. 

“Maybe it needs some help. A shame to be so young and unable to evert,” a different voice said.

Kelas attempted to growl around the prUt in his mouth—he had no problem with everting, his prUt just needed a certain type of attention. With his mouth full of prUt the growl came out through his nose in a snort.

“Don't be disgusting,” this voice came from closer, directly over him, the owner of the prUt that was down his throat. 

“See how long he can choke on it,” someone said.

The prUt was pushed deeper, hitting the back of Kelas' throat, and someone pinched his nose closed. It was an unexpected and thrilling sensation as he was pushed past the point that he could hold his breath and his chest began to ache, his throat began to clench as he tried to gasp for air, choking. The prUt pulled out of his mouth quickly, his nose was released, the rush of air into his lungs was sudden and Kelas sputtered. Some of the men were praising him. He had hardly gotten his breath back when the ritual was repeated. His body was trembling with arousal at being choked on prUt and unable to breathe until someone else allowed it. His was throbbing, and aching, yearning for those fingers to come back and hurt him until his prUt was out.

The repetitiveness of the choking satisfied him a great deal too.

And then something was inserted into his slit, near the back, behind his erectile tissues. It was something cold, and round, forcing the walls to stretch around it. Kelas had a moment to moan with pleasure before the prUt was down his throat again and his nose was pinched. Another prUt was being rubbed against Kelas' subtle jaw ridge, and on his smooth cheek, smearing the foamy spit that dripped down. 

“Before you start the device, try his chuva,” someone said.

Thick fingers pressed down firmly against Kelas' chuva, dark, and blue, and swollen. The pleasure was intense and made him tug against his restraints and cry out when he had the breath to. Again, and again, the fingers pressed urgently into his chuva. The pleasure was so much, so deep, so profound that it made Kelas want to come right there—but he couldn't with his prUt still tucked away.

“Please, please!” Kelas begged, his voice rough from choking. Now both of the prUts were being rubbed against either side of his face, playing in the spit, “please Jasi!” Kelas begged, using a word that meant 'superior'. It was used often to address the dominant person, though he had learned that some preferred to be addressed in other ways: Sir, Yadik, or by high ranking military titles. He'd even been with one man who had requested that he be referred to as “Castellan ThickPrUt”, and another who wanted to be called “Tormentor”. 

“I think his PrUt is broken,” someone said.

Fingers slid over the straining back of Kelas' slit where it stretched around the egg-like thing that had been inserted. They fingers pressed a bit, nudging the toy in more deeply. The nudging and caressing was only a great annoyance to Kelas as it was enough to tease but it wasn't what he needed and craved.

But then there was the minute click of a switch, and the toy inside him buzzed once, sending a small jolt of electricity into the sensitive tissues.

“Oh!” Kelas chirped at the sudden sensation. The quick jolt. It was minor, and gone almost before it had started, as quick as the sting of a scorpion. It was an interesting feeling to be sure but it wasn't really satisfying either. Kelas waiting though, wondering if he would get more of it. Someone unclasped one of his wrists, and took his hand, and curled it around a waiting prUt. The prUt was thick enough and wet enough that Kelas thought it was the same one that had been choking him. He couldn't get over how thick it was, and he began to pump it, snapping his teeth and wanting fiercely to make that prUt explode all over him. “Give me your come, delicious prUt, I want it,” Kelas, “please give it to me.”

He squeezed the base where it emerged from the owner's slit and drew his hand up slowly all the way to the top and then used a twisting motion at the head that made the owner of the lovely thing grunt with pleasure. 

“Fuck,” one of the men hissed.

“Good mouth, good hands, a good ass too I bet. Small and tight.”

Another jolt from the toy came unexpectedly causing Kelas' grip to tighten around the prUt. The second jolt was a bit stronger than the first.

“Let's see about that mouth,” someone said.

“I'd rather see the ass.”

Kelas was certain now that there were four men with him. He continued to pump the prUt in his hand while a new one explored his mouth. This one was not as thick as the first but it was wetter, and seemed to curve, so it kept prodding the inside of his cheek. Someone had moved down his bottom too because fingers were brushing over some of the welts left from the crop and Kelas loved the residual sting and tingle it sent through him. The fingers nudged at his bottom, trying to spread the hole that they found there.

“Nice hole,” the voice from down there hissed. 

Kelas hoped that the fingers would explore him more, that they would push roughly inside of him, and stretch him painfully open, or even that the crop would come back and sting him more. But the fingers at his hole were being careful. There was the sound of spitting and warm spray against the hole and the fingers rubbed there dipping shallowly into the hole. Kelas bit back a scream of frustration. He wanted it rough, and hard. They were treating him like a fragile doll.

“Please!” Kelas whined. Demanding was not his way, but begging was certainly not below him, “please fuck me, fuck me—please--Jasi--please give me your cho'ch.”

One of the men rumbled with pleasure, another began to purr. 

“But we like your desperate begging,” said one of them, “greedy little ass, sick little mouth, ready to open all of your holes for any prUt, aren't you?”

“Yes, yes, I want all of them, Jasi, I want—please--all of me full of prUts!”

“Fuck,” came a grunt from the owner of the prUt Kelas was still working with his hand.

“Would this hungry little hole take two prUts?” purred the man that was still down their teasing him.

“Yes, oh—yes,” Kelas said. He opened his mouth waiting for the curved prUt to have him again, “I'm hungry for your prUts, all of them.” 

The curved prUt filled his mouth again, just briefly, because the man who was teasing his hole was asking him more questions.

“I don't think two prUts would fit... do you?”

And there was another jolt from that toy too. The intensity of it seemed to be increasing each time. The curved prUt left Kelas' mouth long enough for him to answer.

“Jasi, if you make them fit, I will take them—as many as you can give me. If I could take all four of them in my hole at once, I would take them,” Kelas gasped.

“Fuck, fuck—the almighty Union, ah--” the thick prUt in Kelas' hand had come undone with his words. Kelas could feel the owner jerking and spasming through his orgasms, and his hand was coated with a fountain of thick, messy, come. Kelas sipped the air taking in the delicious scent of it.

Someone jerked him by the wrist, bringing the messy hand to his face and smearing it.

“Lick it off,” someone demanded.

The curved prUt was nudging at his jaw ridges. Kelas thought this command must be from the owner of that one. He purred happily as he lapped at the thick liquid treat. 

Another jolt from that toy caused him to bite down on his own hand though—which only added to the pleasure. That jolt had been stronger than the previous ones, and it was beginning to hurt just a bit. Kelas whined and tried to roll his hips, wanting more of it. Everything inside of his genital slit was throbbing. His lubricants were leaking and sliding down the crevasse of his ass where two fingers were now pressed deeply inside of him. But they were still being gentle with him. Kelas let out a snort of frustration, and began to bite into his messy hand. Hard. He had been on the edge of everting for too long and was growing impatient—he needed to feel the pain and let his prUt come out. But he only got in a few bites, one of which he was certain had broken the skin, before his hand was yanked away from him and secured above him again. A wet slap rang out against his spit and come slicked cheek.

“No one said you could bite,” said the man with the curved prUt, “give me your mouth,” his hand gripped Kelas' jaw firmly, and “and if you bite down on this, I will knock your pretty little head right off!”

Kelas' body began to tremble uncontrollably. 

Whoever was wielding the control for the instrument seemed to be responsive to that because the jolt came again, and again, and again, now in quick succession, and even stronger. The pain from the last jolt was so intense that Kelas could hardly stand it, and he cried out around the bent prUt in his mouth, tears dripping from the corners of his eyes. But the jolts had finally urged his prUt out of hiding. The residual electricity from the shocks seemed to race around in his surrounding tissues, causing the muscles in his slit to jump, and his thigh muscles to twitch beneath the soft gray skin.

“Ohhh, there it is now,” someone purred.

Kelas could feel hot breath slide along his exposed prUt. He was certain there were lips hovering just above it. Maybe the tip of a tongue would dart out to touch it, or a scaly nose would nudge it.

“What a delicate little thing.”

“Hardly anything to it.”

Kelas snuffled around his mouthful. He was used to having his prUt insulted, but he didn't particularly enjoy it. The more prUts he had seen, all different sizes, and shapes, he had become more comfortable with his own. It was a great deal smaller than most: but it was his, and he was just different—curvy hips, subtle ridges, stubborn little prUt.

“I like it,” someone else said, “it's pretty. It suits him.”

“I think my prUt suits him better,” said the man who had been playing with Kelas' ass.

And suddenly the large organ was thrust into him, stretching, sinking in deeply. If Kelas had not been restrained he would have arched against it. His restraints rattled a bit as his body tried to complete the action anyway. His mouth fell open into a wide, silent, 'o'.

By the time their play was over with the air smelled heavily of sex and everyone was satisfied; some more than once. Kelas was let out of his restraints. He lay on the floor trembling, throbbing, hurting. The four men thanked him, tossed him a few sexual compliments, and Kelas watched them leave the room from the corner of his eye. 

Now was the difficult part. Getting up, going home, feeling the loneliness crash down harder than ever. The racing thoughts would come, the compulsions, the exhausting looping replay of bad thoughts and bad memories. Kelas curled up on his side and stroked one of the unbuckled restraints that had held his wrists. They made him feel secure. 

Kelas closed his eyes. He heard the door open, and the sound of booted footfalls.  
“Kelas,” said a familiar voice.

He opened his eyes a bit and looked up at a familiar marred face. This was the face of the club owner, whom Kelas had gotten to know rather well, as often as he found himself spending his time in the establishment. 

“Scar,” Kelas said.

“I don't like it when they just leave you on the floor,” the big man grunted, “I've told you, haven't I, to make sure that they know to tend to you afterwards? At least to get you off the floor, and clean you up a bit. You're not here to be a common whore, you know. All parties involved are meant to enjoy themselves here,” Scar crossed his arms over his wide chest.

Kelas swallowed thickly.

“I'm fine,” he muttered, getting up onto his hands and knees. He was trembling though and his legs felt weak. He wasn't really sure he could stand but he intended to try. He didn't want scar to think he was without any self-dignity at all.

Kelas struggled up to his feet. He wiped at his face a bit. Various parts of him were sticky and dripping.

“Maybe for now,” Scar said, “but if you keep this up--”

“I can take care of myself,” Kelas said, his voice barely above a whisper. He wanted to believe his own words, but he felt ill. 

Kelas shuffled slowly around the room, bending carefully to get his clothing. He was exhausted and drained both physically, and emotionally, and he wasn't sure how long he could hold himself together with Scar watching him. His thoughts were a jumble of contradictions—wanting the man to leave him alone and stay out of his business, and yet imagining Scar coming to the showers with him, and washing him clean of his night of activities. 

Scar didn't follow him to the showers, though. The man simply grabbed a bottle of cleaner and began work on sanitizing the items that had been used during play. 

Kelas made it to the showers and sat down underneath the warm spray. His ass and slit were sore and sitting down was uncomfortable. But it had been a better option than allowing his shaking legs to give out on him. He looked down at his hands, small, and fragile looking, and curled them into angry fists. He watched the water swirl in the drain. 

What am I doing? He asked himself without speaking. There was no reply.

Kelas forced his hands to uncurl and worked his fingers through his hair, over his forehead, massaging at his aching temples. 

His mind was already slipping back into the constant spinning circles of compulsions and anxieties. The good feelings from his orgasm had slid down the drain with the water and soap. He was already imagining Scar coming into the shower room and fucking him, even though it was ridiculous, and even though he had just been thoroughly pleasured. But Kelas missed the hands on his skin. He missed the attention. He missed being wanted—already. He slammed his hands down on his thighs in frustration. These things were ridiculous and he couldn't understand why they plagued him. What sort of person was so pathetic, so desperate? 

Kelas began to chew his claws and rock himself beneath the shower. 

When he was finished and dressed he left the club through the back exit and made his way down the darkened alleys. He didn't take himself home to his dorm, but instead he showed up at Dara's pub. He stood for a moment under the street lights, chewing his thumb claw, worrying about showing up at a late hour and bothering her. He hadn't seen her for awhile and now to just show up in the middle of the night—he didn't want to bother her. Kelas tried his best not to be a selfish person but he couldn't stop himself now. He didn't want to be alone in his dorm and his mind felt ready to betray him tonight, ready to shatter in bits, and he couldn't let it. He had come to the city to attend the University, to become a doctor, to make a life for himself that was his own. He had worked hard to get to this point but something was wrong, and Kelas was afraid that his uncontrollable compulsions would take him over so completely that there would be no more room for his studying, for his long-term goals, for any kind of functioning to exist outside of the world he visited at night. If he went home now he wouldn't sleep. His mind would just continue to race, and scramble, and keep him in a state of near madness until sunrise came and he could go about his daily routine that would go a small way to distracting himself. 

Dara answered the door in flimsy robe.

“Kelas!” she said his name in surprise.

Kelas wrung his hands.

“I—I'm sorry. It's late, I—didn't mean to—” panic was inserting itself between his words and pushing them out at oddly spaced intervals.

“It's okay. Come in,” Dara said, motioning him inside.

Her living quarters were above the bar and Dara lead him up the stairs. 

“I'm sorry,” Kelas apologized again, once they were inside her quarters.

“There's nothing to be sorry for. I like your company, and I've been thinking of you lately. But... you seem... unwell,” Dara said.

She moved towards a corner of the room that served as her kitchen and put some tea on.

Kelas didn't know what to say now that he was here. He was considering bolting for the door and leaving her. But now that he had intruded upon her that would be rude too. 

“You don't have to make tea. Please don't fuss,” he ended up saying, around the claw in his mouth.

“I want some tea for myself,” Dara said, “if you want some you can have it to, or you can not.”

She sat down at a small table and motioned towards the empty chair across from her.

“How is University?” Dara asked, while Kelas took a seat, lowering himself down carefully.

He nodded in answer.

“I see,” Dara said, “well... I'm not going to interrogate you. Let's just have some tea for now.”

Kelas stared down at his hands that were splayed on the tabletop and waited for the tea to be done. He was too tense to speak to her without doing much other than continuing to apologize to her. They drank their tea in silence, and at last Kelas let out a deep breath. His chest and throat were too tight and he needed to remember how it felt to breathe.

“Are you in trouble?” Dara asked at last.

“No—yes—ah... n-no, I don't know,” Kelas stuttered.

“Alright... then why are you here, Kelas Parmak?” Dara asked.

Kelas' grip tightened around his teacup.

“Because I... because I... am weak,” he said, “I don't want to be alone with my mind right now. I'm exhausted. I just... want it to stop. Just for a few moments if it could just—just stop!” He let go of his teacup and pressed his fingertips into one temple. 

“What calms you?” Dara asked.

“Nothing,” Kelas practically spat, “it's constant. It never ends. It's never quiet enough. I don't understand why I can't deal with my own mind. Why can't I be in charge of it? Everyone else can't be like this—how--how do you do it? How do you keep your thoughts into neat little boxes? How do you file away certain things when you're done with them and don't want them anymore? How do you make sense of it, how do you bring order to this chaos? How do you—how do you--live with... everything?”

Kelas squeezed his eyes closed.

Dara was quiet for a few moments before speaking.

“Well... Kelas...” she began, “I can't say that my mind is quite the same as yours. The things you describe... I don't really trouble doing those things. My mind doesn't bother me often,” she said.

Kelas opened his eyes to stare at her. He was confused, and angry, and upset with her words, though he supposed deep down he had suspected the truth: that most minds were not like his. 

“Then... then I'm just... not... right... somehow,” Kelas said, still massaging one of his temples. His eyes were beginning to burn. His chest was still tight and it didn't feel like it would let up anytime soon. 

“All minds are different, I think,” Dara said, “I wouldn't know. I'm not educated. But... they must be fore people to be so different from each other. I don't like you saying you're not 'right' though.”

“Then why do I struggle with my mind every moment of every day? There is something wrong with it. Another thing to add to the list of what is wrong with me,” he said, drawing in a few shaky breaths, “I'm not sure what possessed me to think that my mind might be normal. That I just don't know how to... keep it in order... nothing about me is normal. Why should that be?” Kelas gave a small laugh; it was bitter. 

“I can't say that I understand it, not all of it. I have my own differences that I've lived with, being an albino, so... I know what it's like to be an outsider. But I stopped caring long ago about being 'different'. If you spend all of your time just wishing to be things that you aren't, then you can't enjoy anything that you are, can you?”

“What's to enjoy,” Kelas spat.

Dara rose from her seat. She took Kelas' empty cup and her own and sat them aside.

“You tell me. What do you enjoy?” 

Dara moved to the bed and sat down on the edge. The room was small and cramped, even with the space between them, they were close enough to continue their conversation. Kelas seemed to be taking a long while to answer her, though. He was flipping through things in his mind, searching, trying to come up with what he supposed should have been simple answers.

“I... enjoy... learning things when my mind will let me. I enjoy a good cup of tea, counting things, doing my hair. I enjoy... most of all... being touched, and wanted, and... hurt...” Kelas thought he could feel Dara frowning at him. He didn't look up to see if he was correct, though.

“I don't know what's made you so unhappy,” Dara said quietly, “you seemed delighted to go to school. I know how much that meant to you. I know you're not telling me everything—and anyway, that wouldn't be very Cardassian of you, would it?--But... I don't see why you can't try to shift your focus back to that. You were so passionate, Kelas, so determined to get in. What happened to that drive?”

Kelas hunched his shoulders and curled himself over the table.

“I still want to practice medicine,” he said quietly, “my... mind just... seems to get stuck on certain things. When I was a child it served me well to get through all the days I spent alone, inside, in bed and in pain. It comforted me to have certain things to focus on. I didn't feel out of control of them, they didn't make me anxious, and I never considered that my mind was functioning in an abnormal manner. My interests were my anchors. They were my constant companions. They were... my friends. I used to be able to comfort myself by thinking that even though my body was ill, and couldn't do the things that other children did, that I had a good mind. But now... something has happened... my mind has just turned on me. It doesn't comfort me, if frightens me, it makes me feel as though I have no control over anything—and I don't know how to stop it. I don't even know anymore if I was meant to be here. If I had just... stayed home, stayed in my bed, never gone out into the world and tried to exist on my own... maybe there was a reason I was ill, Dara. Maybe I'm just not capable of...”

“Kelas,” Dara said gently, “come here, and come to bed. Come on.”

Kelas felt like he might throw up if he moved. But he did also feel so exhausted. He hardly realized he was moving at all until he was curled up in bed next to Dara.

“I don't have the answers you need,” Dara said, “I have no idea what to tell you, Kel. But there must be a way for you to find them. I'm certain you're not the only person in the Union who has ever felt overwhelmed by life, or by himself.”

She stroked his hair a bit and paused.

“Also, you're not a bad Cardassian, and I don't want to hear you say that again,” she said, “you're allowed to be your own person, away from your family if that is the way it needs to be, and that doesn't make you a bad Cardassian.”

Kelas closed his eyes. There was nothing more he could really say. Being near to Dara helped him calm just a bit, and the exhaustion was finally numbing the rest of his mind, and Kelas welcomed it.

A few more weeks passed with Kelas trying his best to limit his time and activities at the club. But more often than not he was failing at that. He had managed to keep up with his studies and do well but he was disappointed in himself and the way things were at this point in his life. He had never imagined that he would have this much trouble with himself. His intention had been to throw himself into his studies and prove his worth, to learn, to excel, to grow as a person. Instead he found himself struggling to keep his mind from unraveling, grappling with deep feelings of fear, worthlessness, and increasingly frequent periods of despair where he would lock himself into the bathroom he and Crell shared with some of the other students on their floor, and he would cry until there was nothing left to come out of him, and consider that he should give it all up, go home to his village, crawl into bed and never come out. He knew it was wrong, though, and that he would never forgive himself he gave up on his dream.

So he kept going by hanging onto that thought.

But when he met with the Head of Medicine to plan out his next period he was upset that he felt dread rather than excitement at having a schedule of new classes, and new things to learn. Kelas had always been delighted to learn if he couldn't feel that then what was there? And this was only the beginning of his second period. He had years left before he would graduate, and already he was struggling so much.

He sat before Dr. Nevek, slumped in his chair, feeling tiny and terrible under her gaze. She was going over his end of term assessments, all of which he had done wonderfully on, and yet he couldn't even feel proud of himself for it even though he knew that he should be. It took him a moment to realize she was asking him for his input on his upcoming schedule.

She seemed to think he could handle a few more lecture hours than he had began with first term.

Kelas nodded.

“Yes,” he said, thinking that if he filled his schedule fuller, that he would have more to take up his thoughts and keep them off of his obsession with going to the club, and off his darker thoughts, too, “I can handle a few more. And...” he kept thinking over something Crell had suggested to him once. He wouldn't take much of what his room mate said to heart. They were so different and Kelas really did not like him, but one thing had stuck in his mind, and it seemed like a good idea. 

“I think I would a psychology lecture,” he heard himself saying.

Part of him was afraid to do this. His motivation for taking it was to learn more about himself, and the way his mind was, and why. That did give him some hope that he might find understanding, but it also frightened him, that he might learn that there were too many things wrong with his mind and that there weren't any ways to fix a thing as broken as that.

Kelas took a deep breath, and let it out slowly.

Dr. Nevek was listing off various introductory psychology courses. A couple of them struck Kelas hard in the pit of his gut and he knew that he needed to speak up, that he needed to tell her yes, those two. He could hardly find his voice though. It seemed to be locked up behind his pounding heart.

“Introduction to psychological disorders,” Kelas said, “and... the one on sexual behavior.”

He watched numbly as Dr. Nevek entered the course numbers into her PADD.

He felt relieved when he was finished and scrolling through his course list on his own PADD. He really had crammed his schedule full but he was certain this would help him rather than hurt him. 

There was a small break between terms. While many students seemed to be using the break to visit their families, Kelas spent his at Scar's club, and with Dara. His logic was that he was going to spend as much time at the club as he could over his short break and just 'get it out of his system' and head into the next term focusing more strongly on his studies.

“Scar,” Kelas said one day, coming into the club owner's office. He sat himself down a corner of the desk. Scar leaned forward and grunted.

“What is it, Kelas?” the older man asked. 

Kelas gave him a small smile. Scar had never been 'nice' to him, but he did try to insist that Kelas was looked after, even though most of the time that didn't happen. He was a handsome older man despite his extensive facial scarring, which he had earned serving in the military. His hair was slate gray and slicked back in the traditional style. His features were coarse, his neck thick, and strong.

“Would you fuck me, Scar? Like a normal person...” Kelas said.

Scar curled his lip and blinked at Kelas as though Kelas had asked him to stop Prime from spinning.

“It isn't attractive to just ask for it,” Scar grunted, “don't you know how to be a normal Cardassian?”

Kelas bowed his head a bit.

“I... don't think I do, actually,” he said.

Scar sighed. 

“You're too pretty for me,” Scar said.

“Don't say that!” Kelas pleaded, “I'm—I'm not a woman after all!”

“I never said you were a woman. But you're still too pretty for me,” Scar said.

“I'm tired of being told that I'm pretty!” Kelas moved towards one end of the office where Scar kept a display of weapons. There was a knife on a low shelf and Kelas grabbed it. In one swift move he hacked off his braid. It had grown to hang down to the middle of his back. But now he dropped it onto Scar's desk.

“Now am I too pretty? Still?” Kelas leaned forward over the desk and let his now short hair fall into his face, “is it my hips? Maybe I can slice them off too. Or my weak ridges?” Kelas brought the knife to his jaw and slid the tip of it along his small ridges there. He wasn't making any marks or drawing any blood, he was just taking in the feel of the sharp, cool, tip against his skin.

Scar stood from his chair, grabbed Kelas' wrist, and yanked the knife away from him.

“Why are you in my office, Kelas? What do you want?” the man growled.

“I want you to fuck me,” Kelas said, climbing up onto the desk, and inserting himself into Scar's personal space. A few items toppled off of the desk and onto the floor.

“Why?”

“Because... none of those men who I please all the time... none of them care about me. I'm a toy to them. But you... you care about me. You come in to check on me after they're gone. You've even helped me in the shower a time or two. You let me use your dermal regenerator. You even make me use it when I don't want to. You've let me sleep in your office when I've been too drunk or exhausted to go home. You could, couldn't you?” Kelas said, almost pressing his nose to Scar's, “you could fuck me without hurting me. You could do that and maybe I could... maybe I could like it...” Kelas wrapped his hand around one of Scar's neck ridges.

“If you want a lover who will care for you... then you must look elsewhere. Men come to my club to have a good time. To unwind. To engage in activities that their regular partners may not enjoy. It wouldn't be impossible to find that here, but it is unlikely,” Scar said, “but if you approach men in this way all of the time... you're not going to be successful. You can't just throw yourself onto people, Kelas. You can't be so desperate.”

“I can make you feel good. I'm very good at it,” Kelas said, seeming to ignore everything that Scar had just said.

“Get out of my office, Kelas. Go home. Keep yourself away from here for a little while. I think you're becoming too... involved,” Scar said, placing both of his large palms onto Kelas's chest, and pushing him back.

“You do care,” Kelas insisted, “see?”

“I don't want you,” Scar growled, “now get the fuck out, before I throw you out of here, and decide not to allow you back.”

Kelas' heart seemed to freeze in his chest at those words.

He stumbled back from Scar's desk as though the man had physically hurt him, which was exactly what it felt like.  
Kelas left the club and wandered the streets in a daze. His actions played in his mind over, and over. He did tend to throw himself at men in the club, but what he'd done with Scar even he knew it had been too much. He slid his hand over his short hair, already regretting slicing it off, already angry at himself for acting so stupidly. 

He should have known that Scar would not want him, and he should have backed off, instead of continuing to behave so outlandishly. But maybe part of him had wanted something else from it too. He did want the things he had told Scar, he did want them badly. But maybe part of him had also wanted Scar to throw him out. To ban him. If he was cut off by an outside source then maybe he could stop himself. Maybe the compulsions would stop, and the obsession would turn to something more productive. 

Wandering the streets, arms crossed protectively over his chest, didn't really do much to help. Kelas was hardly watching where he was going, or what he was doing, just wandering without direction or purpose. But eventually he found himself at the transport station, and looking up at the electronic numbers and letters displayed on a screen above his head, he saw that one was leaving soon that would stop at the outskirts of his village.

His scales seemed to crawl and his stomach did a nasty flip as he kept staring at that time slot. 

He continued on in a sort of daze and didn't really feel jolted to his senses until he was climbing the steps to his old home.

For a moment he began to panic—what was he doing here? Why had he come home? But he knew what he wanted now. He knocked on the door and his mother answered, surprised to see him, full of questions, but he pushed past her. He heard his father ask 'what's he doing here?' but Kelas did not stop to engage him.

He went to his room and straight to his old bed, not bothering to undress, or even to take his boots off. He curled himself up beneath the blankets, hiding his head, wrapping himself up in a safe and warm cocoon. This was the most familiar thing. The blankets even still smelled the same. A few tears escaped from between Kelas' lashes as he inhaled the scent. He knew he didn't belong here, that he shouldn't have come, but his old bed held him, and his blankets hugged him, and he did not want to leave it.


End file.
